Wednesday, September 15, 2021

MOONSTONE DOUBLE SHOT

 

MOONSTONE DOUBLE SHOT

Edited by Joe Gentile

Featuring - The Green Hornet & Kolchak

By Nancy Holder &

Johnny Dollar

By Tommy Hancock

Moonstone Books

55 pgs

Recently Moonstone Books has started publishing new short Green Hornet prose adventures by various New Pulp scribes in small booklets. Each features a GH tale backed up by a second story featuring another pulp character. In this edition, that is radio investigator Johnny Dollar.

Nancy Holder’s GH story, “House of a Thousand Screams” is fun in that a young reporter named Carl Kolchak shows up at Sentinel publisher Britt Reid’s office looking for a job. He tells read that if given a chance, he’ll uncover the identity of the Green Hornet within two weeks. As this develops, Kolchak also discovers murder at a rundown amusement park and actually ends up working GH and Kato to capture the bad guys. Again, lots of fun.


Then we have Tommy Hancock’s Johnny Dollar story “The For Jenny Matter” about a murdered young woman who worked as a secretary in the police station. At first it appears she is just another victim of a twisted serial killer, but things aren’t what they appear to me and slowly Dollar begins to suspects the real monster is someone he knows personally. This is by far one of Hancock’s best works and the ending is powerful in so many emotional ways. Look for this to get award nods at the end of the year.

All total a little book that packs a solid punch. Way to go, Moonstone!

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