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Category: Fantasy/Suspense/Thriller
Description: Reporter Moxie Donnovan has followed his actor-wife to Hollywood and taken a job as a studio flack, but he hasn't lost his eye for a story... and Hollywood is full of stories. It's 1938, Hitler rules Germany and is supporting U.S. Nazi groups, the studio system is in full force, America still suffers from the Great Depression, and hard-boiled reporter heroes are the order of the day. HEADLINE GHOULS follows Moxie, along with his hard-dancing, hard-drinking wife Maxi, as they confront Hollywood blackmailers, Nazi cells, occult Nazi gangs who use human sacrifice, New Orleans voodoo, and Germany's attempts to infiltrate Hollywood. Moxie and Maxi play off against each other with quick dialogue, an assembly of interesting friends, and the glamour of the studio system in its heyday. Author Teel James Glenn recreates the "pulp" style with over-the-top characters, bizarre situations that combine mystery, nazis and the occult, the hard-charging reporter hero, and plenty of fists, guns and drinking. I especially like the way Glenn pairs the fact-hungry reporter Moxie with his charming wife Maxi. Maxi, a Broadway dancer turned Hollywood actor, is nobody's idea of a damsel in distress. She can throw back drinks with the best of them and she's as likely to rescue Moxie as he is to save her. Teel writes about an America that's now in our past... an America still struggling its way out of the Great Depression, still shackled with the legacy of Jim Crow, yet also hopeful about the future. Teel immerses himself deep in this past, throws out cultural references and Hollywood trivia that will delight fans of old-time pulps, without ever forgetting that we're reading for the story. If you read DEADLINE ZOMBIES, the first book in the Moxie/Maxi series, you'll definitely want to grab HEADLINE GHOULS. If you're not yet a fan you owe yourself the treat.
eBook Publisher: BooksForABuck/BooksForABuck.com,
eBookwise Release Date: May 2012

Available eBook Formats: OEBFF Format (IMP) [326 KB]
Words: 71783
Reading time: 205-287 min.

Dateline: Hollywood 1938

The chanting was the first thing the victim heard when he woke up. It echoed off the walls of the old barn so that he couldn't tell how many voices were raised in invocation.

The words were in some old tongue that sounded vaguely Germanic but wasn't exactly German.

It didn't really matter: the victim couldn't talk Kraut anyway, but he knew they weren't singing nursery rhymes.

The poor soul was tied up on a table of some sort, buck naked and feeling like an idiot. He had walked into a buzz saw with his eyes open looking for a handout when the truck pulled up outside the Hoovertown where he had been camping and got his ears pinned back by a bunch of jack-booted jackasses.

The victim let his head roll over to the right to look in the direction of the guttural voices and wished he hadn't. There were a dozen figures dressed in long robes with hoods on them so that it looked like a bunch of rogue monks in red had come a calling.

The robes where covered with strange symbols the only ones the bound man recognized were swastikas.

There was one whose robe was brightest red and who was a bit taller than the others. His face was shadowed, but his voice was a deep one.

"I see you are awake, Mister Collins," he said. The bound man knew the voice and would have kicked himself if he weren't tied up. It belonged to the one who had offered him the ride to work and food. Then there had been a foul smell and suddenly Collins woke up in his current predicament.

"You will now come to know the true power of the German Reich," Mister Hood said, "The secrets of the old sciences that will serve as example of how we will sweep away the weak and sickly races of the world and make the way for the glorious Aryan race to return to prominence."

The masked man spoke in a declamatory voice as if announcing his plans to the group rather than Collins.

The bound man cursed and commented on the hooded man's circumstances of birth.

This made the goose stepper unhappy and he stepped forward and backhanded Collins across the chops. The hooded man's eyes narrowed with anger and then widened with humor.

"You hope to goad me into killing your outright," Collins's captor said. "I will give you a more exquisite and slow death. I will change you to a form that better suits your station as a beast."

Collins tried to protest again but the hooded figure had produced a dagger and with a flourish raised it high above his head.

"No!" Collins yelled but his cry was drowned out by the increase volume of the chanting and cut short when the gleaming blade flashed down and plunged into his bare chest, ending his life.