Seven Slayers - Paul Cain

There was a sudden roar from a black, curtained roadster on the other side of the street; the sudden ragged roar of four or five shots close together, a white pulsing finger of flame in the dusk, and Coleman sank to his knees. He swayed backwards once, fell forward onto his face hard; his gray hat rolled slowly across the sidewalk. The roadster was moving, had disappeared before Coleman was entirely still. It became very quiet in the street.

Black Lizard Books - 1987

This collection has been sitting on my shelf for many years. I picked up this Black Lizard edition of Paul Cain's Seven Slayers many years ago from a used bookstore in Tempe Arizona that is now closed. A newer, updated version of that bookstore opened in Phoenix a few years ago but, man it's just not the same. I could go on about my favorite old bookstores closing down in the past couple decades (which seems only like a few years to me) but why bother.

So...what can I say about this book that hasn't been said better by other aficionados of the hard-boiled school? I don't know why it took me so long to listen to them and read this book. In a word, these stories rocked! They are chock full o bad guys who are really, really bad, bad-ass dames who can't be trusted and heroes that aren't wholly good. One of the coolest things I noticed in reading the stories is how Cain likes to keep the reader off balance. He does this in subtle ways, as seen in the above paragraph from the story "Murder in Blue" in how many shots were fired. Was it four or five? The omniscient narrator (the author) should know. Or this simple line from the same story; "She was ageless; perhaps twenty-six, perhaps thirty-six."

Or take the high-rise apartment setting from the story "Pigeon Blood" where the hero lives in a flat that has no wall, "At the far side, where the light from the living room faded into darkness, the floor came to an abrupt end - there was no railing or parapet - the nearest building of the same height was several blocks away."

All of the stories wind through the tropes of hard-boiled environments: gambling dens, dingy bars, nightclubs, apartments, rain-swept streets, and sketchy hotels. Fans of this genre will feel completely at home in these stories. Violence is sudden, bodies unexpectedly (for the characters, anyway) turn up in the shadows, bullets fly from across the block, gats are pulled from bathrobes...well you get the idea. No one can be trusted and greed is the common denominator. You'll have a blast reading them.

These stories were originally published in Black Mask way back in the 30's, back when Hammett and Chandler were producing the same kind of hard-boiled tales for the same publications. If you like those guys, you'll like Paul Cain's stories also. Cain's fictional output was limited to only one novel, Fast One, and 17 short stories. I have a copy of Fast One and am looking forward to reading it soon. He was a screenwriter under the name George Sims. His fictional output has been collected under the title The Complete Slayers for anyone interesting in shelling out a whopping chunk of change.

Dagger of Flesh - Richard Prather

The cloth slithered over her shoulders and down her back, baring the bold, high breasts. Ayla seemed almost unaware of her now nearly complete nudity, but her large dark eyes were fixed on me. She held the robe momentarily gathered at her waist, covering only the outer curve of her hips and the outside edge of each thigh; and standing like that with her black brows slanting upward, the full breasts thrusting forward, her legs parted slightly and her skin a startling white contrasting with the black cloth, she looked almost obscenely naked. She made me think for that moment of a hot, lusty woman who would enjoy herself in hell.  

Crest - 2nd Printing, May 1957

Back into my favorite genre of fiction with this unusual book by Richard Prather, who can always be relied on to deliver a fast enjoyable caper. Dagger of Flesh is unusual in that instead of our expected hero Shell Scott we have a private dick by the name of Mark Logan on the case. Even more interesting about the novel is that it was rejected by Gold Medal in its original version, presumably because Gold Medal preferred a Shell Scott caper to this unknown cat named Mark Logan. Then, years later Gold Medal apparently published the novel after exchanging Shell Scott's name for Logan, only forgetting to address all the pesky details like, Shell Scott and Mark Logan don't look anything alike and both have different backstories. Both, however, are full of piss and vinegar and never let their case at hand sidetrack  them from a lusty babe like the one in the above paragraph.

Gold Medal 

The novel begins with Logan in the sack with a hot dame he knows only as Gladys. Seems he picked up Gladys in a bar one afternoon and the two of them have been doing the dirty for the past few days. Mark feels a sense of guilt about it though, because he knows Gladys is married. She has no guilty feelings whatsoever and is more than happy to be spending her afternoons doing the horizontal bop with our hero. So, after making arrangements to hook up again the following evening, Mark Logan returns to his office where he has an appointment with an old friend named Jay Weather. Jay owns a successful men's clothing store and for the past week has been getting pressured by a couple of rough types to sell the store off at a price way beneath its value. And to make matters worse for Mr. Weather, he keeps seeing a parrot on his shoulder every day at noon, for exactly one hour. That's right, a parrot. Only no one else sees this parrot, just our distraught Mr. Weather.

Well, things get even messier from there. After asking his old friend Jay Weather how things are going at home with the family, Logan realizes that Weather's new wife is Gladys, the same chick he's been banging the past week. Oh brother, some detective this guy is!

Thanks to a police psychiatrist buddy of Logan's, we learn that Jay Weather's invisible parrot may just possibly be the result of a post hypnotic trance. You see, just a week prior, Jay Weather hosted a small party at his mansion that featured a professional hypnotist named Joseph Borden. As for the two characters pressuring Weather to sell his shop, well they're for real all right, as Mark Logan soon discovers when one of them saps him with the butt of his gun later that night at Weather's store.

The plot thickens with a whole heaping dose of hypnosis hoo-haw which Mark Logan has to wade through. Along the way he tangles with the whole kooky crowd that attended this wacky hypnotist party that Jay Weather hosted. That includes Gladys, the sex-hungry wife, their daughter Ann, another horny sex kitten that seems more than anxious to sink her claws into our hero. And a couple of bizarre artist types, including one Ayla Veichek, who can't seem to cross a room without her clothes slipping off her body.

Well, we're not 40 pages into the book before someone kills Jay Weather, using Mark Logan's gun as the murder weapon. And to make matters worse for our hero, it seems that Logan has fallen victim to a hypnotic spell of his own. Only problem is, he has no idea who is responsible.

So you can see, this is a fairly ridiculous plot for a detective novel. There are plenty of scenes that stretch credulity to say the least. And Logan is a far cry from Hercule Poirot when it comes to using his "little gray cells." But that really doesn't take the fun away from the book. Many of Prather's capers are over the top with goofiness. These books don't take themselves as seriously as some other private eye novels of that era did. So there you have it, for  what it's worth. Now if I can just figure out why whenever someone mentions Winona Ryder's name in public I run around on all fours barking like a dog...it's getting kinda embarrassing.

Absalom, Absalom! - William Faulkner

No engagement, no courtship even: he and Judith saw one another three times in two years, for a total period of seventeen days, counting the time which Ellen consumed; they parted without even saying goodbye. And yet, four years later, Henry had to kill Bon to keep them from marrying.

Vintage Books, August 1972

Oh man, I don't really mean to go so long between posts. Life has a way of interfering with the fun stuff. I've been working longer hours at my day job, you know what I mean, that crap you have to do to provide a paycheck that affords the stuff you were really born to do. And I'm halfway through what will hopefully be my 3rd novel. Here's hoping that someone out there has checked out my first two novels...but this ain't the place for plugging my stuff. This is the place to look back at that...HEY! What the hell is William Faulkner doing here in the Files? This ain't typically a scene for that hi-falutin literature stuff that comes with over-sweetened lattes.

Honestly, I'm kind of surprised myself. I didn't really intend on digging into this book again, twenty-some years after the first time reading it. But it's been sitting on my shelf with my other meager collection of Faulkner novels, and I see it and think "gawd-dang that was a good effin' book" and next thing I knew I was wading into the swamp of Sutpen's Hundred all over again. And I mean pulled in like quicksand, succumbing to the winding labyrinthian (sometimes tortuous) prose of what I think is Faulkner's very best novel. I'm not anywhere near a Faulknerian expert. I've read about 5 of his books, and two of those (including this one) twice. But, man...could that dude write!

So...yeah, everyone knows this is a difficult book to read because of the style and structure of the novel, the long passages, the stream of conscience and the confusing timelines. I heard all that stuff too before I first read it. But I was an English major at FSU...I can take it, bring it on! And yes, those first dozen or so pages alone are daunting enough, wherein Quentin Compson agrees to meet the old spinster Rosa Coldfield and first hears the story of Thomas Sutpen who came from nowhere with his two pistols, a horse and a "herd of wild negroes" to pull his 100 mile homestead up from the very earth itself, erect his mansion from the clay of the land and by the sweat of his brow and to later marry Rosa's sister Ellen who gives birth to Henry and Judith thereby keeping in form and destiny Sutpen's plan to seed the south with his offspring and carve his name into the hearth of the noble gentry of Yoknapatawpha County Mississippi. But pushing aside the difficulties of the book and forging onward through the dense prose will reward the soul with a storm of tormented passions that leaves one breathless at its conclusion. A story of past sins that haunt the present, of a family cursed, of murder and violence and war, all told and retold through the lenses of three generations and fifty years of loss and ruin.

Okay, you get the idea, the 10-cent shadow of such in what I was going for there. And...ornate prose aside, I can't recommend this book highly enough. On this second go-round I'd forgotten how heartbreaking so much of the novel is. How painful and tragic and cruel the human condition can be. This is what the best literature does for us. It hurts and disturbs and, ultimately, provides a glimmer of hope. Don't let the difficult rep stop you from reading this book. Dig into it and surrender yourself to the words and don't worry that a particular passage of the moment doesn't make sense. It's not meant to make sense on a linear destination like we're used to. Take it as it comes and stick with it. It will come together by the end you will not be sorry afterward.

Blue City - Ross MacDonald

I didn't go near him. I had the notion that his tense body would give off a sour-sweat odor of depravity. But I moved close up to the wretched smile and took the envelope from breast pocket. He winced and jerked as if I was trying to tickle him. I had an impulse to hit him then, but I held it back. Violence might destroy the remnants of human dignity that kept him erect and smiling, and turn him into something queer--so queer that I wouldn't want to look at it. Another violence might do something to me too--make me howl like a dog or cry like a baby or pleat daisies in my hair.

Bantam Books

For his third novel, Blue City, Ross MacDonald was still finding his hardboiled style while giving the reader a straight up dose of sex and violence, It mostly works, barring MacDonald's ever-present penchant for the awkward English Major touches. It's a simple revenge tail of a prodigal son returning to his hometown to avenge the murder of his father. Only in in this instance, John Weathers doesn't know that his father J.D. Weathers has been murdered upon his ignominious return home. Unshaven, road weary, penniless, and homeless, he only learns of his father's murder, two years before, from a rummy in a cheap bar. A few hours later he learns that his father was something of a crook, albeit a gentleman crook, with an array of enemies from both sides of the law. The town itself, unnamed but located a few hours from Chicago, is a snake-pit of corruption and vice, thanks to the legacy of J.D. Weathers and his associates.

If' you've only read MacDonald's Lew Archer novels, Blue City is going to be a jarring experience for you. People are shot, stabbed, sliced, kicked in the head, hit with shovels, beaten, slapped, raped, slashed in the face, punched...well it ain't pretty friends. And John Weathers is no Lew Archer by any stretch. In fact it's difficult to have any empathy for John Weathers at all, as he spends the first third of the novel barging into living rooms and night clubs pushing people around and accusing them of being complicit in his father's murder.

For a lead protagonist, John Weathers is a little hard to swallow. We learn that he's been on the road for a number of years and is home from the war, and that he's only 21 years old. At no time in the book does he seem like a man that young. Granted, war experience will age a person, but John Weathers must have had some college time in the army because there are a few instances where he lapses into professor-speak, For instance, after beating the crap out of a couple hoods in a restroom he informs the bartender, "If the comic in the lavatory doesn't come to in another five minutes, you better send for a police ambulance."

He is also better read than your average 21 year old combat veteran. "Some of the titles I noted were Gargantua and Pantagruel, The Sentimental Education, To Have and Have Not, The Wild Palms. It was somehow comforting to know that the good people of the town that supported Kerch were protected against the lubricity of Rabelais, the immorality of Flaubert, the viciousness of Hemingway, and the degradation of Faulkner."

Plot-wise, Blue City doesn't come close to the labyrinthine plots of the Archer novels. There are past sins to answer for, some skeletons in closets, but the main plot is a relatively straightforward pursuit of justice. Everyone in the novel carries a collective guilt for the corruption within our unnamed Blue City. Complacency, greed and vice by its citizens produce the cesspool in which they must live. Even the mayor, Freeman Allister (note the subtle symbolism in the name!) is not immune to the lure of complacency in which he attempts to get along with the entrenched political forces.

Women don't fare any better then the nefarious men of Blue City. They're all either prostitutes, drug addicts, alcoholics and schemers. Abortion seems to be a thriving business. They're routinely beaten and raped in the course of their lives. It's literally South of Hell the way it's depicted. It's an angry novel, one that in some ways reminds me of Sanctuary by William Faulkner in its exuberant embrace of depravity.

First published in 1947, Blue City is still in print. I would recommend it to fans of hardboiled literature as well as fans of Ross MacDonald who may have missed this novel among the better known Archer series.

The Nullifier (Joe Gall) - Philip Atlee

The next number was a blue tango. This tango does not depend on gyrations, clutchings, or simulated copulation, and yet there is more sexuality in it than any other dance. The movements are all grace and pointed pause, in slow time, and in them the man defers to the object of his chase. So I held her lightly, fingertips and hip, and we moved to the controlled tempo. 

And when that dance had ended, I did not step away. Instead, I thrust my hands under the rajah coat and cradled her firm breasts.  (-- The Silken Baroness Contract)

I thought it would be fun to look back at the couple of  Philip Atlee's Joe Gall novels that I've read. Joe Gall was an American response to James Bond much like another hardboiled spy of the time, Matt Helm, His first adventure occurred in the novel Pagoda by Philip Atlee, however the proper series of Joe Gall adventure starts with The Green Wound Contract, originally published under the title The Green Wound, way back in 1963.

You certainly do not have to read these in order, because continuity between contracts really goes out the window as Joe Gall's adventures progress. Looking back at his first "contract" known as The Green Wound Contract (which was the 4th one that I read) we have a plot that careens from one set piece to the next with all the logic of a dream in which there is a race riot, a blackjack wielding nun, a blues guitarist who kills for kicks, a bunch of "Arab-gowned goons" and a couple of screwy women to spice things up. The whole thing is delivered in a cynical hardboiled tone that I find kind of enjoyable. You learn fast that Joe Gall can be a real dick, and he's no fan of politically correct observations.

My first exposure to Joe Gall's world, (and reading these adventures you have to accept that it's Joe Gall's world and no one else's!) was in the novel The Ruby Star Contract. In this one, Joe Gall gets sent to Burma where he hires an escort, has lots of sex and curry, blows shit up, plays poker for his life against a drunken monk, is captured by a tribe of headhunters, somehow manages to play one dictator off against another, and (mostly!) comes out in one piece by the end. And I'm not sure what the damn thing was about.

Then there was The Rockabye Contract in which Joe Gall was assigned to act as bodyguard, under the guise as manager, for a 6'2" folkie singer named Hester Prim. This one had a loopy chase through Europe that included a factory of walking teddy-bears wired to explode. Then somehow it ended up on a Caribbean island run by a dictator who wanted to kill our hot singer Hester Prim. And yes,this is all during a rebellion.

I lay listening, staring at the sky. The airport was only a few miles from town. The ring of tanks around the Palace was still blowing up foolhardy rebels who tried to rush the gates and the lighter fire from the roof and the gatehouses continued. (-- The Rockabye Contract)

Joe Gall will go to any lengths in his adventures as long is it involves bedding plenty of babes. For example, in The Death Bird Contract from 1968, Gall takes an assignment to investigate the background of a potential diplomat (and millionaire) named Lewis Wardlaw in Mexico. We know it's not going to be easy when we learn that two previous agents assigned to monitor Wardlaw had come to bad ends. The crazy thing about this "Contract" is that in order to go undercover and appropriately blend into the scene in Mexico Joe Gall must first become a heroin addict. With that setup, we're off and cooking in a plot wherein Gall hooks up with a beautiful dancer, goes to jail, lives in a party-house, attends an opium-fueled orgy, takes a dip in a pool filled with piranhas, escapes from a clinic specializing in black-market organ stealing, gets chased by federales and all while suffering withdrawals from the needle. Proving once and for all that spying ain't a game for sissies!

It all sounds crazy, but I must say that in all seriousness, these novels are really well written. Philip Atlee has a compelling eye for detail, especially in all the exotic places he sends our hero. There is also an appealing charm to Joe Gall's attitude that grows on you, in spite of his being a bit of a jerk. I'm not going to say they're any better or worse than some of the better known spy series novels out there. They're full of confusing plots and odd diversions that make you wonder if the whole thing was done in a make-it-up-as-you-go-along manner. Women are props and not much else. Gall is a chauvinist just like any proper secret agent from the 1960's should be. So with that in mind I am going to say that they're a lot of fun to read.

I think it would be just fine if these were made available again for e-readers, noting that I prefer the smelly old paperbacks first and foremost. And wouldn't it have been something if we had a team-up of Joe Gall and Matt Helm out there on a caper? I can only imagine! There wouldn't be a safe broad in sight, unless they did something unforgivable like wearing slacks!

Happy hunting.

Infinity Science Fiction - November 1957

After a year of being stationed on the Lunatron, Jim Britten had the feeling of being fed up. Lunatics they call us, he thought. Real crazy.  - From "Formula for Murder" by Lee Gregor

November 1957 - Cover by Ed Emsh

Digging back into the stack of 1950's Science Fiction mags I picked up last year for this one. The line-up of writers in this issue includes: Gordon R. Dickson, Robert Silverberg, Lee Gregor, James Blish, Algis Budrys, Allen K. Long and David Mason. Clearly you have a selection of Science Fiction heavyweights represented here. Also, not a single woman writer in the bunch. Something I just now noticed. Which may explain somewhat the reason this issue came off as just a tad dry for me.

I've read Silverberg, Blish and Budrys before tapping into this digest. All of the others, including Dickson, were new to me. Yes, I've seen Dickson's name on tons of science fiction racks in used bookstores, but I've never been tempted to read anything by him. His story here, "The General and the Axe" didn't do anything to change that. The plot concerns a settlement of pioneers on an Earth-like planet after the destruction of our own Earth. It seems that, although all of their needs and comforts are provided for, they have no desire to populate their new home with a new race of Earthlings. General Tully, an Earthling himself, is assigned to motivate the pioneers into action. It's understood that our home planet has been decimated in what is assumed to be a nuclear holocaust of some type. The other planets in the solar system are populated, and interstellar travel has been conquered. Given all that, the concern of these pioneers makes no sense. So Earthlings take to their new planet with a malaise, and don't seem to care about their pending extinction. I just wasn't hooked on the premise with this one.

"One Way Journey" by Robert Silverberg was a lot more interesting. In this story, we have a planet, Kollidor, which is essentially a military outpost wherein one of Earth's soldiers falls in love with a native and desires to remain after his tour of duty is up. The "problem" is that the natives are considered so unattractive and appealing that there is no clear reason why an Earthling could ever fall in love with one and want to remain. In fact he's so adamant on remaining on Kollidor that he's willing to become a deserter. The story is a study in psychology and motherhood as his reasons are discovered. It was decent, but one expects that in a Robert Silverberg story.

"The Skirmisher" by Algis Budrys is the best in the magazine in my opinion. It's also the shortest. This story could have been at home in a crime digest of the time. That's probably why it appealed to me so much. In it, a cop named Hoyt investigates the seeming random deaths of a number of people across the U.S., all of which are connected to one single man named Albert Madigan. Hoyt attempts to interrogate Madigan as he is performing target practice with a rifle. Through a tense exchange between the two we learn that there is nothing random to a man who controls time.

"The Long Question" by David Mason is about a strange, really strange, televised game show where the lone contestant, in this case an accountant named Don Gerson, is sent to an isolated island for 2 months. The island has all the creature comforts Gerson could want; food, shelter, books, music, everything except companionship. At the end of two months Gerson will be retrieved from the island and have to answer a quiz in the hopes of winning $100,000. If he loses...well, we don't know what happens. Because two months go by and no one returns for Gerson. It's a weird story, hinting at an end-of-the-world scenario and what the last man left can create for future history. I liked this one a lot also.

"Nor Iron Bars" by James Blish involves interstellar travel on a microcosmic level. It didn't engage me at all. I was never once pulled into the story in spite of some sort of cool settings. This is where I might as well admit that my taste in Science Fiction is probably not very mature by some people's standards. I look for escapist entertainment in my Science Fiction, or at the least characters I can relate to. A lot of Science Fiction I've encountered seems to present what could be intriguing ideas played out by bland characters who use bad dialog (calling out Poul Anderson and Robert Heinlein here!). That's what happens in this story. Same thing with "The Railhead at Krystl Khoto" by Allen K. Long. It's just people talking about stuff, in this case, building a rocket to the moon before the Soviets do until "the end" is typed.

"Formula For Murder" by Lee Gregor is more like it when it comes to escapist Sci-Fi. It involves espionage, brainwashing and murder on a satellite orbiting the Earth. It's a lot of fun and the only fault I had with it is an ending that is rushed.

This issue of Infinity also contains a column by Damon Knight reviewing Big Planet by Jack Vance, The Green Odyssey by Philip Jose Farmer, and Eye in the Sky by Philip K. Dick. He liked Big Planet and Eye in the Sky. As for The Green Odyssey, not so much.

And that's that for Infinity Science Fiction in November of 1957. Old fashioned, square-jawed entertainment for less than a dollar! Some good stuff, some not so good stuff.

A Glass of Darkness - Philip K. Dick

Motionless--but alive. This was no stone image, no frozen statue. This was life, but life outside of time. There was no change, no motion for him, as men comprehended change and motion. He was eternal. The averted head was his most striking feature. It seemed to glow. It was clearly a radiant orb, apulse with life and brilliance. 

His head was the sun.

Satellite Science Fiction, 1956 - Cover by Kelly Freas

Whoa, man...that's cosmic! Well, yeah, it is kinda cosmic just like the really cool cover by Kelly Freas indicates. Some Philip K. Dick fans will know that A Glass of Darkness was later reprinted as The Cosmic Puppets in 1957 by ACE Books. I have the Vintage Books edition that was published much later. I don't have to read it, since I've now read the original Satellite Science Fiction version, thanks to picking up a bunch of old Sci-Fi digests not long ago.

Back in the early 80's, after seeing Blade Runner in the theater, I went out and picked up a bunch of PKD's novels in paperback and went on a binge. I still wish I had them. I had no idea that good clean used copies of his books would be so hard to come by in later years.

As you can see by the date, this is early Dick, when he was still working out the themes that would come to dominate his later novels and stories. Here you have something closer to The Outer Limits, or the Twilight Zone, wherein our hero Ted Barton takes his wife Peg on a detour into the hills of Virginia to see his old hometown Millgate. Peg couldn't give a rip, and is more interested in knocking back cocktails in the city than having to endure a tour of Millgate. Peg is kind of a shrew, but an interesting character in that she seems so unlike the type of woman that would marry Ted Barton. I was curious who she was in Philip K. Dick's imagination, and why she was introduced beyond getting descriptions of her legs and breasts whenever she's on the page. But sadly, she's dispatched off to some hotel in Martinsville to cool her jets for the rest of the story. Clearly Dick want her around bitching about how boring Millgate is and how crazy Ted has become.

You see, Millgate is definitely not the Millgate that Ted remembers from his childhood. Gone is the park, the school, the stores, the streets, even his own house. Instead they've been replaced by different streets, buildings and businesses. No one Ted talks to admits to ever knowing anything about the places he remembers. A research in the local paper reveals something even more disquieting for Ted. That instead of moving away at the age of 9, he's reported to have died of Scarlet Fever as a child! Is Ted Barton someone else? a man with false memories? Or is the town locked in some kind of mad hypnosis? To make matters even worse, Ted discovers that he can no longer leave Millgate, as all roads out of town are now blocked.

So you have a good setup here, but then things get really weird. In Millgate, you have this odd kid named Peter Trilling who is able to make clay figures come to life. You also have another kid name Mary Meade who can verbally communicate with bees and cats and moths. You also have these strange figures referred to by the locals as "The Wanderers." The Wanderers are ghostlike apparitions, beings, that can walk through walls. It's all very upsetting for Ted Barton, who probably should have taken Peg's advice and ditched Millgate for a bar in D.C.

Ted takes up room and board in Mabel Trilling's home, where he meets the strange kid Peter. Peter right away senses that Ted is an outsider, that somehow he's managed to cross into the town when others could not. Ted also meets Dr. Meade who runs a private hospital named Shady House. As things progress in the novel, Ted encounters the town drunk, William Christopher, who seems to be the only person in Millgate that remembers "the change" that occurred 18 years in the past. It's now Christopher's mission to return the town back to its real version, something he can only manage in small doses,

So what's the deal with Millgate and all weirdness? Well, it turns out that there is a cosmic battle of sorts between to godlike entities Ahriman and Ormazd and Millgate is the terrestrial arena. Yup!

Yeah, it all kind of goes a bit bonkers and sort of lost me at that point. I found myself thinking more about Peg and her heaving breasts back in a dingy hotel bar in Martinsville while the cosmic battle is playing out in Millgate. But, as far as pulp novels go, it was cool. You can see the early makings of Philip K. Dick's talent for unsettling paranoia and what is the nature of reality going on. I think most fans of mid-century science fiction would dig it.