Glorious Trash

December 21, 2024 4:39 PM

Glorious Trash has been "trawling the depths of forgotten fiction" for the past 14 years. The depth of its Men's Adventure coverage is suggested by there being 50 entries just for the Nick Carter: Killmaster series alone. But there are also Tough Cops, Post-Nuke Pulps, Ninjas, Nazi She-Devils, and just plain Sleaze. Worth a visit just for the cover art.

In his Hall of Fame is The Aquanauts #7: Operation Deep Six (1972):

Judging from the previous six volumes, I knew what to expect for this seventh installment of The Aquanauts: a lurid crime yarn with some sleaze, some exploitation, and some padding. And that’s pretty much what I got... for the first half, at least. The second half of Operation Deep Six was a taut action thriller with sci-fi overtones, and by far this one was my favorite installment yet. Manning Lee Stokes (aka “Ken Stanton”) was often guilty of turning in overly-padded digressions, but when he was on form he was on form, a la Valley Of Vultures and Liberator Of Jedd, and he was on form for this one.

There’s no pickup from the previous volume (which anyway was set before the fifth volume), and for once we aren’t given the date that all this occurs. Instead we open with Secret Underwater Service honcho Admiral Coffin receiving a typewritten letter warning him that something’s about to happen to experimental submarine J2, and further, that previous experimental sub J1 wasn’t actually lost at sea, last year, but was hijacked. There are enough pertinent details in the letter to convince Coffin that the unknown letter-writer might not just be a crackpot. And by the way we get the usual stuff with Coffin talking the caper over with his equally-old colleague, the head of the Navy, but Stokes much reduces this stuff, this time, and I’m happy to report that he’s finally hit on a template that lives up to the plural of the series name, i.e. The Aquanauts: Admiral Coffin, Commander Tom Greene, and William “Tiger Shark” Martin. All three get a moment to shine, with none of the non-Tiger Shark sequences coming off as filler, as they often did in the previous six books.

posted by Lemkin (10 comments total)

Oh man, I was a huge Don Pendleton reader back in the 80s.
Good times.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 6:12 PM on December 21, 2024 [1 favorite]

Worth a visit just for the cover art.

Damn, you're not kidding. This is great. Looking at these, I can practically smell my late father's ashtray, the one he kept next to his stack of paperbacks in the living room.
posted by mittens at 6:42 PM on December 21, 2024 [3 favorites]

I read a D.Pendleton book in my youth and decided to ape his style for a school paper.

That resulted in a parent teacher conference.
posted by pdoege at 8:15 PM on December 21, 2024 [6 favorites]

That resulted in a parent teacher conference.

My mom found and read the Killmaster paperback I borrowed from the school library, confiscated it, and told them they shouldn't carry such filth (Maybe she had a point).

Thank god the Illuminatus! books I borrowed looked too weird for her to try.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:33 PM on December 21, 2024 [5 favorites]

Wow. Thank you for sharing this resource. What a wonderful window on a weird pivotal period in history and its imaginations.
posted by astrobiophysican at 11:01 PM on December 21, 2024 [1 favorite]

I followed this site a few years ago, but ultimately realized that Joe leans much more right wing than I think will be popular on MF. For example, read the end of his review of the Destroyer novel currently on the front page. YMMV.
posted by wittgenstein at 6:47 AM on December 22, 2024 [1 favorite]

Hmmm. The way I read that, Joe doesn’t know how right-wing the NY Post actually is. But I get your point.
posted by scratch at 7:31 AM on December 22, 2024 [1 favorite]

Joe leans much more right wing than I think will be popular on MF

Yeah, I considered putting up a content warning for boyzone and right-wingery. But in the end, I figured if you click through to a website knowing it has reviews of Nazi She-Devil novels, you forfeit any expectations of genteelery.
posted by Lemkin at 7:33 AM on December 22, 2024 [1 favorite]

Lemkin - having said that, I agree with you that his reviews really give you a feel as to whether you would actually want to read the books!
posted by wittgenstein at 9:53 AM on December 22, 2024 [2 favorites]

I have a friend who wrote a couple Nick Carter books in the 70s, each one in less than a week (much less in one case, I think.) He called it "exorcising all the stupid out of my brain in exchange for a month's rent."
posted by Inkslinger at 7:37 PM on December 22, 2024 [4 favorites]