Avallone, Michael (pulp fiction writer)

 
(1924-1999) Also wrote as: Nick Carter, Troy Conway, Priscilla Dalton, Dorothea Nile, Edwina Noone, Vance Stanton, Sidney Stuart

Avallone published hundreds of paperback originals in his long and bumpy career, everything from a hard-boiled detective series to assorted gothics, spy stories, nurse novels, erotica, juveniles, horror stories, science fiction, a driving manual for teenagers, movie trivia quiz topics, and novelizations of such movies as Shock Corridor and A Bullet for Pretty Boy and such television shows as The Man from U.N.C.L.E, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., Hawaii Five-O, Mannix, and The Felony Squad—all of it turned out at white-hot speed, in some cases in less than a week. He crowned himself “The Fastest Typewriter in the East,” a sobriquet that unfortunately brought to mind the old punch line, “That’s not writing, that’s typing.” High-speed key pounding and concomitant facile imagination were both Avallone’s great asset and his handicap. Avallone created an often loopy fiction that transcended the niceties of grammar, logic, realism, or common sense. At his most unconstrained and subliterate, his work bore comparison to the slaphappy writings of Harry Stephen keeler and the hard-boiled unrealities of Robert Leslie bellem, comically overblown, awkwardly personalized, zipping along on its own private wavelength. At his best he was a fertile pro who delivered a good read and never condescended to any assignment no matter how unpromising—in fact, Avallone’s vibrant self-regard tended to elevate all of his work, and in conversation he could discuss his artistic intentions in one of his Partridge Family novels (based on the family sitcom of the ’70s) with the detail and fervor of a Shakespeare scholar annotating Hamlet.

A New Yorker born into a large, voluble family, Avallone grew up under tough conditions in the Great Depression. He was a dedicated moviegoer and a reader of the pulp magazines, with a particular fondness for the “hero pulps” starring the Shadow, the Spider, and Doc Savage. He was also devoted to the adventure novels of earlier years, especially Alexandre Dumas and his musketeers, and daydreamed of an adventurous life for himself as a spy or an FBI agent. Avallone served in the army in World War II and came out a sergeant and a decorated hero. He had been writing bits and pieces all along and kept a detailed diary throughout his time in the service. He worked at odd jobs in New York until he published his first novel at the age of 29. The Tall Dolores (1953) was the initial case from the files of Ed Noon, a tough, jaunty, humane private eye and an obsessed movie buff (the author’s close identification with his creation would become increasingly apparent as more Noon topics appeared). Subsequent Noon adventures were published at the rate of one or two a year. For unknown reasons, and two of the novels—The Case of the Violent Virgin and The Case of the Bouncing Betty— were published together as an Ace double edition (two novels printed back to back in a single edition). Avallone continued the series for the rest of his life, and there may have been some manuscripts, in later decades, that never found publication. Noon was originally a rather straightforward variation on the classic pulp private eye as well as the best-selling first-person narrations of Mike Hammer by Mickey spillane. As the series developed, though, it became increasingly original and eccentric, filled with nutso characters and plot devices. Noon himself became an unlikely sometime-operative for the president of the United States with a direct hot line to the White House, and was sent off on unlikely top secret assignments like the one in The Hot Body, in which Noon has to stop a virtual Jackie Kennedy ex-First Lady from defecting to Castro’s Cuba. As delineated by bibliophiles like Bill Pronzini, Aval-lone’s peculiar approach to storytelling could be breathtaking, full of unfortunate similes, strange sentence structure, bad jokes and puns, and undigested political rhetoric and cultural rants.

In the 1960s, Avallone’s most productive period, he wrote topics in nearly every category of commercial fiction under his own name and various pen names and house names (his gothic fiction pseudonym was an awkward in-joke, putting his private eye hero into drag as “Edwina Noone”). Many of these assignments were for small flat fees with no royalties, even though some of the topics—like his Man from U.N.C.L.E. noveliza-tions—were big sellers.

In later years Avallone became embittered by various slights and lost opportunities that he believed he had suffered at the hands of developers and fellow authors. In amateur publications aimed at fans of the old pulps and paperbacks, Avallone sometimes wrote enviously of more successful writers and referred to conspiracies to keep his own career down. But he could also write with sympathy and insight about older writers and literary heroes like Cornell woolrich whom he had been able to meet in earlier times. To people who expressed an interest in his work—or in old topics, old movies, old radio programs—he was an ebullient, good-humored, warm-hearted, and knowledgeable character.

Works

  • Bullet for Pretty Boy, A (1970);
  • Alarming Clock, The (1973);
  • All the Way Home (1960);
  • And Sex Walked In (1963);
  • Arabella Nude, The (1992);
  • Assassins Don’t Die in Bed (1968);
  • Bedroom Bolero, The (1963);
  • Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970);
  • Birds of a Feather Affair, The (1966);
  • Blazing Affair, The (1966);
  • Cannonball Run (1981);
  • Case of the Bouncing Betty, The (1957);
  • Case of the Violent Virgin, The (1957);
  • Cloisonne Vase, The (1970);
  • Coffin Things, The (1968);
  • Crazy Mixed-up Corpse (1957);
  • Dead Game (1954);
  • Death Dives Deep (1971);
  • Doctors, The (1970);
  • Doomsday Bag, The (1969);
  • Fallen Angel (1974);
  • Fat Death (1972);
  • February Doll Murders, The (1966);
  • Felony Squad, The (1967);
  • Flight Hostess Rogers (1962);
  • Flower Covered Corpse, The (1969);
  • Friday the 13th Part Three: 3-D (1982);
  • Girl in the Cockpit, The (1972);
  • Girls in Television, The (1974);
  • Hawaii Five-O (1968);
  • Hawaii Five-O: Terror in the Sun (1969);
  • High Noon at Midnight Hornets’ Nest (1970);
  • Horrible Man, The (1968);
  • Hot Body, The (1973);
  • Incident, The (1968);
  • Kaleidoscope (1966);
  • Kill Her—You’ll Like It (1973);
  • Killer on the Keys (1973);
  • Krakatoa, East of Java (1969);
  • Little Black topic (1961);
  • Little Miss Murder (1971);
  • Living Bomb, The (1972);
  • London, Bloody London (1972);
  • Lust at Leisure (1963);
  • Lust Is No Lady (1964);
  • Madame X (1966);
  • Man from AVON, The (1967);
  • Man from U.N.C.L.E., The: The Thousand Coffins Affair (1965);
  • Mannix (1968);
  • Meanwhile Back at the Morgue (1960);
  • Missing (1969);
  • Never Love a Call Girl (1962);
  • One More Time (1970);
  • Open Season on Cops (1992);
  • Partridge Family, The (1970);
  • Partridge Family, The: Keith the Hero (1970);
  • Partridge Family, The: Love Comes to Keith Partridge (1973);
  • Platinum Trap, The (1962);
  • Sex Kitten (1962);
  • Shock Corridor (1963);
  • Shoot It Again, Sam (1972);
  • Sinners in White (1962);
  • Spitting Image, The (1953);
  • Stag Stripper (1996);
  • Station Six Sahara (1964);
  • Tall Dolores, The (1953);
  • There Is Something About a Dame (1963);
  • Violence in Velvet (1956);
  • Voodoo Murders, The (1957);
  • Werewolf Walks Tonight, The (1974);
  • Women in Prison (1961);
  • X-Rated Corpse, The (1973)
  • As Nick Carter: China Doll, The (1964);
  • Run Spy Run (1964);
  • Saigon (1964)

As Troy Conway:

  • All Screwed Up (1971);
  • Big Broad Jump, The (1969);
  • Blow Your Mind Job, The (1970);
  • Come One, Come All (1968);
  • Cunning Linguist (1970);
  • Had Any Lately? (1969);
  • Stiff Proposition, A (1971)

As Priscilla Dalton:

  • Darkening Willows, The (1965);
  • 90 Gramercy Park (1965)

As Edwina Noone:

  • Corridor of Whispers (1965);
  • Craghold Legacy, The (1971);
  • Daughter of Darkness (1966);
  • Heirloom of Tragedy (1965);
  • Seacliffe (1968);
  • Victorian Crown, The (1966)

As Vance Stanton:

  • Keith Partridge, Master Spy (1971);
  • Young Dillinger (1965)

As Sidney Stuart:

  • Night Walker, The (1964)

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