Elmer Merle Parsons was born in Pittsburgh, PA, in 1926. In 1949, when he was 23 years old, he was convicted of burglary and grand theft for stealing a car from a Phoenix used car lot and leading police on a wild chase that ended in a crash. He served three years in Chino State Prison… but didn’t stay free for long. In 1955, he was arrested in Pasadena, CA for passing 22 stolen checks, which he told the court he needed to “tide him over” while awaiting money for a script he claimed he’d sold and because he couldn’t get a job due to his prison record. He was sentenced to five years in prison, which he served at San Quentin, where he became editor of the prison newspaper and sold his first novel, Self Made Widow, to Fawcett for a $3500 advance under the pen-name “Philip Race.” He wrote wrote & published two more novels, Killer Take All and Johnny Come Deadly, under his pen name.
After his release in 1960, he wrote one novel (Dark of Summer) and several westerns under his own name and also contributed scripts for many TV series, including Sea Hunt, Cheyenne, Ripcord, Bonanza, The Dakotas, The Virginian and Flipper.
Johnny Babcock was the name on the life insurance policy for $100,000. Johnny Babcock was the name on all the identification found on the crumpled, burnt body found at the body of a ravine. Johnny Babcock’s grieving widow gratefully accepted the cashier’s check from the insurance company. And all the while, Johnny Babcock lived on Skid Row, doubled-crossed by the wife he loved…and facing murder charges if he ever revealed his true identify. Is there a way out for Johnny that doesn’t put him in the grave… or behind bars?
An uncensored wanton was Marie, an unadulterated adultress who lived in a world of men — and enemies. There was a raging furnace fueled by greed and desire. Her passion was to inflame men and then consume them, leaving behind her the ashes of dead loves. In the summer resort where she reigned, man after man felt the touch of her fire, woman after woman shriveled up in her fierce glow…and the human debris mounted. Then the stranger came among them, a man with a past too heavy to carry, with a granite heart and hands to tear the world apart… or snuff out a life. And so they met, fire beat against unmelting rock, and the air of summer was charged with the stifling heat that comes before the storm.
Texas: 1869. When a man wearing Yankee blue returns home, he’s a walking target… even for his own brother.