by Ralph Dennis
The men’s adventure paperback series of the ’70s were akin to the men’s adventure magazines of the ’50s, but there was one big difference. The true stories in the men’s adventure magazines of the ’50s looked (albeit salaciously) to past events. But the men’s adventure paperback series of the ’70s looked to the present and to the future beyond.
The simple, yet spiritually patriotic theme, as established by Pendleton, of taking back the streets of America from pimps and mobsters, unleashed the imagination of a new generation of pulp writers. Uncountable men’s adventure paperback series exploded onto spinner racks in every five-&-dime, supermarket, and drugstore across the country. Clearly, the American psyche was willing to accept the war on crime could only be won by lone vigilantes rising up from the ranks of the everyman to massacre robbers, thieves, drug lords, corrupt cops, pimps, hitmen, hoods, goons, lowlifes and Mafia dons across the country.
The reading public’s appetite for the genre appeared insatiable. The Executioner, The Destroyer, The Penetrator, The Expeditor, The Inquisitor, The Liquidator, and the Protector joined the likes of The Death Merchant, The Revenger, The Killmaster, The Marksman, The Sharpshooter, and dozens of other mercenaries, reformed hitmen, and Death Wish-lite vigilantes to fight our battle.
The men’s adventure paperback series quickly established a set of clichés—Sexy large breasted women are in need of rescue everywhere. Unlimited ammunition is always available. A knife thrown by a hero at any range is instantly fatal. For supposedly being a secret art, ninjas proliferate like SDTs. The faithful, yet weak and desperate companion always saves the hero’s ass in a pinch. Explosives always go off in the nick of time. Before killing the captured hero, super villains will always explain their nefarious plot, giving the hero the chance to escape. The key to victory is courage and smart-ass remarks.
In mainstream fiction, when all is said and done, a great deal is said and very little done. In genre fiction, not much is said, but a great deal is done, which finally gets us to the bottom of the rabbit hole and to the tea party with Hardman and Hump.
The men’s adventure paperback series’ bred many similarly packaged series, each a slightly blurry version of the original mold. Other genres, Westerns in particular, sought to tart up their own genre’s standard tropes by dressing them up as men’s adventure series.
The Hardman series brought its own hyper-realistic take to the war on crime. It was new. It was brilliant. It was different.
Unfortunately, it was bought by Popular Library, which built their publishing business on knock-offs of whatever was hot at the time. Popular Library did not establish trends. Instead, they chased them, picking up the leftover genre dollars along the way.
Faced with the superior writing quality of the Hardman books, Popular Library panicked. They recognized the series was a hybrid, but they didn’t trust it to find its own niche in the market. Popular Library didn’t trust different.
Having no clue how to sell different, the publisher threw Hardman overboard to flounder in the vast sea of vigilantes and Death Wish imitators.
As the ’70s took hold of its destiny, the men’s adventure series paperbacks fell out of favor. Some held on through the ’80s, but eventually they too disappeared the same way film noir and men’s adventure magazines did when their cultural stress release was no longer needed.
By touting the Hardman series as something it wasn’t, the books got short shrift and quickly fell into the same obscurity as the men’s adventure genre. Hardman deserved much better.
Even in obscurity, the Hardman books continue to be something special. While the lingo and attitudes were warts of the ’70s, the characters, their relationships, and the quality of Dennis’ writing was timeless. The series became a hidden genre gem. It was whispered about only by the most hardcore genre fans—who turned collecting the twelve sacred Hardman books into a quest of mythical proportions.
However, it appears you can’t keep a Hardman down. Once Brash Books co-founder Lee Goldberg discovered Hardman, he began a legendary quest of his own to bring the series back into the mainstream. And now he has succeeded with the publication of these new editions. Wrapped in stunning and appropriate covers, this lost literary treasure of the ’70s is finally getting the recognition it deserves, and Jim Hardman and Hump Evans have found themselves officially added to the pantheon of hardboiled greats.
Paul Bishop is a 35-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department. His career included a three year tour with his department’s Anti-Terrorist Division and over twenty-five years’ experience in the investigation of sex crimes. Twice honored as LAPD’s Detective of the Year, Paul also received the Quality and Productivity Commission Award from the City of Los Angeles. He currently conducts law enforcement related seminars for city, state, and private agencies.
Paul is the author of fifteen novels and has written numerous scripts for episodic television and feature films. His latest book, Lie Catchers, is the first in a new series featuring top LAPD interrogators Ray Pagan and Calamity Jane Randall.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ralph Dennis isn’t a household name … but he should be. He is widely considered among crime writers as a master of the genre, denied the recognition he deserved because his twelve Hardman books, which are beloved and highly sought-after collectables now, were poorly packaged in the 1970s by Popular Library as a cheap men’s action-adventure paperbacks with numbered titles.
Even so, some top critics saw past the cheesy covers and noticed that he was producing work as good as John D. MacDonald, Raymond Chandler, Chester Himes, Dashiell Hammett, and Ross MacDonald.
The New York Times praised the Hardman novels for “expert writing, plotting, and an unusual degree of sensitivity. Dennis has mastered the genre and supplied top entertainment.” The Philadelphia Daily News proclaimed Hardman “the best series around, but they’ve got such terrible covers …”
Unfortunately, Popular Library didn’t take the hint and continued to present the series like hack work, dooming the novels to a short shelf-life and obscurity … except among generations of crime writers, like novelist Joe R. Lansdale (the Hap & Leonard series) and screenwriter Shane Black (the Lethal Weapon movies), who’ve kept Dennis’ legacy alive through word-of-mouth and by acknowledging his influence on their stellar work.
Ralph Dennis wrote three other novels that were published outside of the Hardman series—Atlanta, Deadman’s Game and MacTaggart’s War—but he wasn’t able to reach the wide audience, or gain the critical acclaim, that he deserved during his lifetime.
He was born in 1931 in Sumter, South Carolina, and received a masters degree from University of North Carolina, where he later taught film and television writing after serving a stint in the Navy. At the time of his death in 1988, he was working at a bookstore in Atlanta and had a file cabinet full of unpublished novels.
Brash Books will be releasing the entire Hardman series, his three other published novels, and his long-lost manuscripts.
