Review: More Than Just a Clever Title
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 27, 2012
It's darn clever plotting, too. Organized crime had its filthy mitts all over professional boxing in the 1950s and, appropriately, it plays a major part in this tightly written retro-pulp novella.Characters will make or break a work of fiction, and author Dundee ("Tunney") scored a decisive win with the Duke, here. He's tough, brave, streetwise and yet a good joe to his very core. To paint it in crude brush strokes, he is similar to a Louis L'Amour western hero, only in a gritty postwar urban setting.I have great appreciation for the classic pulps, and admiration for the pulp writers. But frankly, those guys were meeting deadlines and worried about bills most of the time; so even some of their great works weren't as carefully polished as this novella. And yet Counterpunch maintains a vintage pulp fiction flavor from cover to cover.All the Fight Card books are great reads, and this one is exemplary.Henry Brown is the Two-Fisted Blogger, and chief/cook/bottle washer at Virtual Pulp Press. He is author of some pulpy fiction of his own, and the military thriller Hell and Gone.