W Howard Baker - The Judas Diary (undated)

[Calenture]

The Judas Diary (Zenith, undated)

This was Richard Quintain's Most Chilling assignment - to find and kill a British newspaperman, influentially related by marriage to an American polititian of near Cabinet rank, because Franklin was believed to be a traitor.

But what of Liliane, the beautiful blackhaired Eurasian girl? Was she his accomplice - or his self-appointed executioner?

Do you reckon this Baker chap ever stopped writing to eat or go to the toilet or something? Can't seem to move without falling over his stuff, these days!

[pulphack]

There are loads of Baker/Ballinger books for the simple reason that when he took over the Sexton Blake Library editorship, al the old writers had really run their course, and those few still around threw a moody at his update ideas. The only exception was Rex Hardinge, who wrote a couple of titles, and actually returned after a gap of almost two decades. He'd got bored, and welcomed the change.

Anyway, until Baker assembled the likes of McNeilly, Thomas, Richards, etc, it was down to George Mann (as Arthur MacLean) and himself to fill the gaps. Seeing as both men had grown up in the mushroom jungle school of write quick and cash the cheque before the publisher goes under, they coukld churn out several thousand words a day. If a Blake is 40,000, and you can do 5,000 a day, then you can write two a month. Which was the ferequency of the Library at that time. Given turnaround time on such publications, it was necessary for Baker to work that hard to plug the gaps until the new boys could be recruited and start to get into print.

Which makes it unsuprising that he spent latter years recycling the old stuff - why not, he'd flogged his guts out to get it done in the first place!