Category Archives: Adrian McKinty

Launch of Girl Gangs, Biker Biker Boys & Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction & Youth Culture, 1950-1980

Posted on December 7, 2017 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

Thanks to all those who came out on Monday for the launch of Girl Gangs, Biker Biker Boys & Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction & Youth Culture, at Grub Street Bookshop in Fitzroy. A fine time was had by all ushering the book into the world.

The book is the first comprehensive account of how the rise of postwar youth culture was depicted in mass-market pulp fiction. It is the perfect Christmas present for that hard to buy for family member or friend.

Melbourne folk can buy copies of Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, and Real Cool Cats at Grub Street Bookshop, Brunswick Bound bookshop and Sun Books in Yarraville, with other locations to follow soon.

You can order the book online from the following places:

From the publisher, PM Press, here

From Amazon

From Book Depository.

From Booktopia

From Angus and Robertson Online

From Waterstones

Folks in the US who have pre-ordered have started receiving the book. Those in the UK will have to wait a little longer, probably until later in December, early January, to receive their copy.

Those of you who have the book and like it, please don’t forget to spread the word, including rating it on Goodreads and Amazon. If you work in a library, it would be great if you could order the book in.… Read more

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Posted in Adrian McKinty, Girl Gangs, Biker Boys and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction & Youth Culture, 1950-1980, Horwitz Publications, New English Library, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp paperback cover art

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Pulp Friday: British horror pulp

Posted on October 27, 2017 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

Halloween approaches and, as has been my habit over the last couple of years, I want to mark the occasion with a bit of pulp. Horror pulp, actually. British horror pulp, to be exact.

American horror pulp got a bit of love on this site a little while ago, when I reviewed Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks From Hell: The Twisted History of ‘70s and ‘80s Horror Fiction, a history of American horror from the 1970 and 1980s.

But I reckon the Brits have always done horror pulp really well. And, if you want proof, feast your eyes on the wonderful selection of British horror pulp from the 1960s and 1970s, all sourced from my collection, including a couple of ultra rare Hammer paperback film tie-ins I own.

Enjoy Halloween.

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Posted in Adrian McKinty, Albert Dekker, British pulp fiction, Horror, New English Library, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art

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Beat Not the Bones & the story of an Australian Edgar Allan Poe Award winner

Posted on April 19, 2016 by Andrew Nette| 13 Comments

Beat Not the Bones Avon 1955As many of the my US readers will no doubt be aware, America’s foremost crime writing awards, the annual Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Awards, will be presented on April 28.

The upcoming awards make it an opportune time to revisit the winner of the Edgar Award in 1954. That book was called Beat Not the Bones, and it was written not by an American but by an Adelaide-born woman called Geraldine Halls, writing under the pseudonym, Charlotte Jay. That the winner the next year was Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye, gives you some idea how prestigious Halls’ win was.

Why some writers and their books go onto achieve lasting literary fame, while others, in this case Halls and her considerable work, sink into obscurity, always fascinates me. In a writing career stretching from 1951 to her last published novel in 1995, she produced fifteen books. Seven of these appeared under the pseudonym of Jay, her maiden name, and seven as Geraldine Halls, Halls being her married name. Another was published under the alias Geraldine Mary Jay.

There is very little information available about Halls, who died in Adelaide in October 1996, and the only image I could find on the Internet is on the Austlit site and is taken from the Adelaide Advertiser, dated May 8, 1853.… Read more

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Posted in Adrian McKinty, Australian crime fiction, Book Reviews

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Empty beaches: In search of Australia’s fictional private eyes

Posted on October 16, 2015 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

Empty BeachSeptember 12 marked the 30th anniversary of the release of a little-known Australian crime movie, The Empty Beach. The film fared poorly upon release and is still unavailable on DVD — you’d have to track down a rare second-hand VHS edition to view it.

Nonetheless, the film is something of an obsession of mine and I have been wanting to write about it in detail for a while now. This is partly because I am a huge Bryan Brown as well as always being fascinated with movies that I thinks are good but which have, for whatever reason, sunk into obscurity.

Also The Empty Beach and its source material, the third book in what has become a long-running series by Sydney writer Peter Corris, feature something largely absent from Australian crime fiction and film: the bone fide, card-carrying, full-time private investigator for hire.

I finally got around to writing a piece on the film and its source book for the Los Angeles Review of Books. You can read the essay, ‘Empty Beaches: In Search of Australia’s Fictional Private Eyes’ in full here.… Read more

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Posted in Adrian McKinty, Australian crime fiction, Australian crime film, Australian noir, Bryan Brown

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Melbourne Writers Festival: Adrian McKinty & Australia’s pulp history

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

GoneThe Melbourne Writers Festival is upon us and I’ve got a a few slots in the program I wanted to pull on your coats about.

This coming Wednesday, August 27, I’ll be in conversation with crime writer, Adrian McKinty at St Kilda Library. I have written a bit about McKinty on this site, including reviews of his books Falling Glass, and his Shane Duffy trilogy, The Cold, Cold Ground, I Hear the Sirens in the Streets, and In the Morning I’ll Be Gone,  and his latest stand alone, The Sun Is God, and I’m looking forward to talking with him in person.

It’ll be a pretty relaxed affair and it is free. Proceedings will kick off at 6.30pm.

Also, join me on August 30 at the Ian Potter Centre, NGV Australia, Federation Square, for a walk down the dimly lit back alleys of the lost world of Australian pulp paperback publishing.

For a few decades in the second half of last century, Australia’s pulp scene burned brightly with tales of jaded gumshoes, valiant servicemen and women, sexually bored housewives, jazzed up beatniks, daring spies, and violent youth gangs.

It was disposable fiction, designed for a coat pocket or bag, to be read quickly, and discarded.… Read more

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Posted in Adrian McKinty, Melbourne Writers Festival, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Scripts Publications, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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