Darryle Purcell – författare

It's 1939 and someone seems to be trying to kill famous monster stars Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, shooting a horror film at Monogram Studios. Sets are being burned down and the Hollywood Cowboy Detectives – PR flack Curly Woods, studio chauffeur Nick Danby and cowboy star Hoot Gibson – are asked to find out who is behind the arson and why.With the help of Karloff and Lugosi, longstanding rivals (who find it difficult to bury the hatchet and work together even when their lives are on the line), the Hollywood Cowboy Detectives pursue the trail of a monstrous horned figure whose goal may be to destroy Los Angeles itself. Fighting their way through flying torpedoes, suicide bombers, brown-suited seemingly mute thugs, and weapons that fire liquid electricity, the HCD's and their actor allies finally find themselves trapped and outnumbered in the underground lair of a real-life monster that makes Universal Studios' horrors pale in comparison.In this cliffhanger, pulp-style adventure, author Darryle Purcell's Hollywood Cowboy Detectives find themselves up against their most dangerous nemesis yet. Illustrated. Bonus short story...LON CHANEY, JR. HAUNTED BY DEMONS? THE HCD TO THE RESCUE? It's 1939 and actor Lon Chaney Jr. has just completed a magnificent performance as Lennie in Of Mice and Men. Now, he is in a sanitarium fighting depression and alcoholism, which have plagued him his whole life. Each night, instead of getting better, Chaney Jr. hallucinates visits from his father's famous screen monsters – Erik, The Phantom of the Opera, the vampire from London After Midnight and a maniacal clown from He Who Gets Slapped – and it's destroying his mind. Fortunately for Chaney Jr., western star Ken Maynard, also a lifelong dipsomaniac, is in the facility taking the cure.

With a generous serving of humor, Jiles and his beautiful wife, Tenacity (who is also a talented cartoonist), join with their comic-book characters, including the purple Mohawk-wearing, web-footed, duck-billed superhero DuckTard and his obedient serpents King Cobra and Pity the small green pit viper, among others, who come alive to fight evil in southern California.Cartoonist/crime-fighter Vernon Jiles, AKA Vermin, returns in his second action-packed pulp adventure – War of the Mind Beasts. Vernon and Tenacity Jiles own DuckTard Comics in Fullerton, California. The two cartoonists and their amazing menagerie of feathered, furry and reptilian crime-fighting comic-book characters once again take to the streets, this time to battle a maniacal master of mind control and the monsters he unleashes on an unwary society.· A horse wrangler is killed during an assault on a western film crew by a gigantic kraken in the mountains of Arizona.· A snake the size of an Amtrak passenger train crushes vehicles and devours pedestrians on Harbor Boulevard in Fullerton, California.· Ants as big as military cargo planes attack a cowboy picnic at a movie ranch in the San Gabriel Valley.After that, the action explodes as only Vermin has the abilities to fight the beasts and save civilized society.Darryle Purcell, who writes and illustrates the Hollywood Cowboy Detectives, Man of the Mist and Ghost Squad series, has created another cozy-action horror pulp series featuring a likeable husband and wife team of crime fighters and their loveable cartoon warriors.

An Evil Sorcerer Targets Clark Gable & Carole Lombard - The Ghosts Of Jean Harlow And George Gershwin Try To Warn MGM … Can Even The Hollywood Cowboy Detectives Save Them?The team of fading B-western stars turned ghost hunters and mystery solvers, known as the Hollywood Cowboy Detectives, have a reputation around 1930s Tinseltown for getting the job done, but not without some heavy drinking, while creating chaos and destruction. They have helped Mascot, Monogram, Republic Pictures and other low-budget "e;Poverty Row"e; studios out of tight corners; but their reputation as troublemakers has kept the industry giants like MGM, Warners', Universal, etc. studios from calling on their services as troubleshooters. But that is about to change, and the HCD are about to get their chance to move up to the big time. It's late December of 1939 and, at the beachfront home of Louis B. Mayer, a disreputable fortuneteller makes deadly predictions about Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer personnel that begin coming true. Film stars Clark Gable and his new wife, Carole Lombard, join with Republic flack Sean "e;Curly"e; Woods, World Champion Rodeo Cowboy Hoot Gibson and chauffeur Nick Danby, of the Hollywood Cowboy Detectives, as they battle for their lives against a supernatural power that may unleash a Hell on Earth. While Curly attempts to get better acquainted with the Goldwyn Girl of his dreams, the detectives must fend off Bugsy Siegel's assassins plus a demon from Hell that mortals may not be able to destroy. Spirits of recently departed Hollywood entertainers Douglas Fairbanks, Jean Harlow, George Gershwin, Warner Oland and others warn Woods of impending danger, while also making him doubt his own sanity. In their strangest adventure to date, the Hollywood Cowboy Detectives must track down and destroy an evil sorcerer who plans on opening a portal to Hell on Christmas Eve. And even if the western heroes succeed, will their wild shenanigans cause them to lose Louis B. Mayer's goodwill forever.Bonus HCD story...The Golden Age Of Radio ... Tarnished By Murder.  The Hollywood Cowboy Detectives – Republic Pictures flack Sean "e;Curly"e; Woods, World Champion Rodeo Cowboy Hoot Gibson and studio chauffeur Nick Danby – show up at a dreary mansion in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains where a troupe of radio actors are preparing for their next hardboiled detective murder mystery broadcast. Unfortunately life has decided to imitate art, in that the lead actor of the Don Dunnett, Private Eye, series, Allen Lawford, is found murdered in the stables. A storm has cut the phone lines, the roads have become impassable, and the murderer is still in the house.

Tighten your cinch, you are about to ride with the Hollywood Cowboy Detectives as you've never seen them before. Hoot Gibson, Sean "e;Curly"e; Woods and a posse of adventurous friends embark on a trail of vengeance, to track and kill the murderer of one of Hollywood's greatest film cowboys. Along the way, these white-hatted heroes encounter 1940's American Fifth Columnists including U.S. Senator Burton Wheeler,  an ambassador to Ireland as well as members of the news and entertainment industries. The cowboys battle Nazi assassins, who attempt to send them to Boot Hill in a variety of well-choreographed "e;accidents,"e; plus the use of deadly gas, starving diseased rats and a gigantic ancient creature that lives off horse manure and human flesh. The action takes place from the streets of Hollywood, California, across the Southwest to an Arizona dude ranch near Wickenburg. The Hooter and friends go undercover to root out the enemy beneath western skies and deep into abandoned prospector diggins'. Unlike any prior Hollywood Cowboy Detectives adventure, these white-hatted western heroes are focused on revenge!Bonus HCD short story...A Hollywood Cowboy Detectives-Man of The Mist Crossover Adventure!

In the Mystery of the Cowboy Summit, the Hollywood Cowboy Detectives fight for their lives against terrifying monsters, both human and otherwise, along the Amazon River in Brazil. "e;Once again, Purcell invites his readers along displaying a genuine love of his characters, both real and fictional, and his understanding of the times. [His books are] "e;rootin-tootin' gems."e; -Pulp Fiction ReviewsIt's the last week of March 1941 and FDR has asked Republic Pictures flack Curly Woods, studio chauffeur Nick Danby and western film stars Hoot Gibson, Buck Jones and Crash Corrigan to attend a Cowboy Summit in Brazil. The President's plan is for the film stars to slap backs, sign autographs and be All-American goodwill ambassadors to South and Central American business representatives. At the same time, they are expected to keep their cynical eyes open to make sure State Department officials don't make friends with any "e;wolves in sheepskin business suits."e; Gorgeous blonde State Department official Arlene Mistevin, raven-haired hostess Maria Sebastian and Dr. Anita LaFond and her lovely auburn locks keep things interesting for the cowboys, whose priorities are always justice, beer and beautiful ladies - not necessarily in that order.The cowboys discover that the spectacular yet secluded Rancho Grandé hides deadly secrets more dangerous than the Amazon River's piranhas, crocodiles and poison dart carrying indigenous natives. And they come face to face with an organization of extreme maniacs preparing a terror campaign against America's environment, economy and culture.This time, classic western stars Buck Jones and Crash Corrigan join Curly, Hoot and Nick in the pulp-action sci-fi western thrills reminiscent of the amazing Saturday matinee cliffhanger serials of the 1930s and '40s. Former newspaper editor and political cartoonist Darryle Purcell also illustrates his Hollywood Cowboy Detectives and Man of the Mist books in the style of the classic pulp publications of the same era.