Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Giant Western, June 1953

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. I don’t know who did the cover, but I’m not fond of it. It seems too drab and murky to me. But in this case, since the stories inside looked promising, I didn’t really care that much about the cover. It was just good to get a chance to read a Western pulp again after being away from them for a while.

I’m a long-time fan of William Hopson, although I’ve always found his work inconsistent. He wrote some great books, some not very good ones, and a lot in between that were still entertaining. The lead novel in this issue of GIANT WESTERN is one of those rare cases where a pulp novel actually is novel-length. And in fact, “Cow Thief Empire” was published as a hardback novel by Arcadia House, also in 1953. It might have been expanded some for book publication, but my hunch is that it wasn’t, at least not in any significant way. The pulp version is long enough to have been an Arcadia House Western.

But what is it about, you ask? Stony Burns, a rancher who has a spread in Indian Territory on land leased from the Indians, rides down into the Texas Panhandle to the ranch where his late father worked. When he got word of his father’s death, Stony decided to visit the ranch and put up a gravestone. But when he gets there, he immediately clashes with the beautiful young woman who inherited the ranch and winds up making an enemy out of the ranch manager, as well. The stove-up old cowboy who serves as the ranch cook has a beautiful daughter, too, and before you know it, we have a tension-filled romantic rectangle that results in several brutal fistfights.

This is far from being a Western romance, though. Before you know it, a Comanche war party jumps the reservation and follows the buffalo south through the Panhandle, and “Cow Thief Empire” turns into an Indian fighting yarn, with Stony Burns and the young woman who owns the ranch holed up in an isolated line shack, trying to survive a blizzard and an attack by that war party. Up until then, Stony has hated the girl, but now he sees her in a new light.

But wait, the cook’s daughter is captured by the Comanches, and Stony has go after her, joining up with a cavalry patrol to do so, and “Cow Thief Empire” becomes a cavalry vs. the Indians story. If that’s not enough, an army of rustlers descends on the Panhandle after the Indian threat is dealt with, and those rustlers are led by an old enemy of Stony’s, which makes “Cow Thief Empire” (finally, the title fits) a Save the Ranch tale, with some Texas Ranger action thrown in to sweeten the pot.

Whew! You get the idea. “Cow Thief Empire” has the same sort of epic sweep and kitchen sink plotting as TO TAME A LAND, my favorite Louis L’Amour novel. L’Amour was a better writer overall than Hopson, and Hopson’s Texas geography is a little shaky at times, but although I wasn’t sure at first, I wound up really enjoying “Cow Thief Empire”. I love big, sprawling Westerns like this, and Hopson keeps things moving along briskly. The characters are interesting, and they actually evolve over the course of the story. The protagonist, Stony Burns, is pretty unlikable at the start. In fact, he’s downright rotten, but he grows into a sympathetic hero. This isn’t the best novel I’ve read by William Hopson, but it’s right up there. (My two favorites by him, for what it’s worth, are THE RANGE CAT and GUNFIGHTER’S PAY, and I go back and forth on which one is better.)

Thomas Calvert McClary published hundreds of Western, detective, and adventure stories in the pulps and digests in a long career that lasted from the early Thirties to the mid-Sixties. His story in this issue, “Frontier Post”, published under the name T.C. McClary, is a cavalry yarn, as you might guess from the title. The captain in command of the post has to deal not only with a horde of Blackfeet on the warpath but also an overbearing Senator on an inspection tour of the West. It’s not a bad story, but the writing isn’t very good and I struggled a little to get through it. I haven’t read a lot by McClary, but I think this is the weakest story of his I’ve encountered.

I don’t know much about Marc Miller. “A Bride Comes to Dry Gulch” was his first published story, and he went on to do about a dozen more Western and detective stories for various pulps. This is a mail order bride story, as you can guess from the title, and it’s told in the sort of folksy, humorous, first-person narration that often doesn’t work for me. I actually liked this story better than I expected to, but it’s not really that funny and it comes to a very abrupt ending, as if it’s just the first part of what should have been a longer story.

G. Davisson Lough is one of the pseudonyms of Glenn Dale Lough, a West Virginia writer whose career started in the Western and detective pulps in the mid-Forties, but who is best remembered today as the author of dozens of softcore novels, most of them for lower-rung publishers, under the names Glenn Low and John Furlough. I’ve read several of his novels and enjoyed them. I think “The Damned Die Old”, his novelette in this issue, is the first Western by him that I’ve read. It has an unlikely protagonist, a cowardly misfit who takes on the job of delivering the ex-wife of an outlaw who escaped from prison to a ghost town where the fugitive plans to take his revenge on her. Or does he? There’s also a fortune in hidden loot in play, as well as numerous other hardcases who want to get their hands on it. Lough drops the reader down right in the middle of this complicated plot. He tends to play up basic emotions in his work, so there’s plenty of lust, greed, and brutality in this one, but some admirable traits emerge from the characters as well, even the unlikely ones. The writing is gritty and raw and works very well. This is a terrific story that I thoroughly enjoyed. Lough’s fiction has a distinctive voice, and I really need to read more of it.

I don’t know anything about Fred Delano except that he published a few stories in various Western pulps in the mid-Fifties. “The Glass Ball” in this issue is about a down-on-his-luck rancher who decides to go after the reward on a bank robber because some clever deduction has clued him in on the thief’s identity. It’s an okay story, not at all surprising in its resolution but decently written.

Caddo Cameron, whose real name was Charles Richard Beeler, was a prolific contributor to the Western and general fiction pulps from the mid-Thirties to the early Fifties. His novelette “A Devil on the Cattle Trail” in this issue is his last published story. It’s about a trail drive and a young wrangler who gets a reputation as a hoodoo, or jinx. The actual protagonist is one of the cowboys who sticks up for the youngster. I don’t know anything about Beeler’s background, but I’ve read several of his stories and the air of authenticity about them always strikes me. I suspect that like Walt Coburn, J.E. Grinstead, Chuck Martin, Eugene Cunningham, and others, he worked as a cowboy at some point in his life. This story lacks a dramatic resolution, but it’s a very likable yarn despite that. 

With so much of this issue being taken up by Hopson’s novel, the overall quality sort of has to rise and fall with it, and it’s a good one so I’d say this is a pretty good issue of GIANT WESTERN. The story by Glenn Lough is also excellent and the others are all right, with McClary’s cavalry yarn being the weakest. If you have a copy on your shelves, it’s worth reading.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Hide Hunters - Lewis B. Patten

Unlike most of the Lewis B. Patten novels I’ve read, this one is based on a historical incident, the epic battle between thirty or forty buffalo hunters and hundreds of Comanche, Kiowa, and Southern Cheyenne warriors under the command of Quanah Parker at Adobe Walls in the Texas Panhandle. I think it’s a rule that every Western author has to write an Adobe Walls book sooner or later. It’s such a good, dramatic story, with the buffalo hunters, including Billy Dixon and a young Bat Masterson, standing off what should have been an overwhelming force of Indians.

In this novel, Patten creates a few fictional characters and gives them reasons to be at Adobe Walls when the attack takes place. Would-be buffalo hunter Jess Burdett rescues beautiful Edith Clinger from her abusive husband, who of course follows them to Adobe Walls bent on reclaiming his wife and having his revenge on Burdett. For some reason, a lot of Patten’s heroes wind up in love with other men’s wives, and that’s the case here. He usually has some sort of violent death conveniently befall the husband, freeing the woman to wind up with the hero, but the resolution isn’t quite so neat in this book.

As always with Patten’s work, there’s a good deal of moral ambiguity, plenty of terse prose, and some hard-nosed action scenes in THE HIDE HUNTERS. He gets the history right and does a fine job of portraying the battle itself, so the reader winds up with a very good blend of fact and fiction. I enjoyed this one enough that I’m tempted to read his Custer book, THE RED SABBATH, another historically-based novel.

(It'll come as no surprise to most of you that I haven't, in fact, read THE RED SABBATH in the years since this post first appeared on October 9, 2009. But I still might someday. There's no reprint of THE HIDE HUNTERS currently available, but used copies are out there in the wild and not too expensive.)

Review: Commando #5603: The Buffer - Brent Towns

A while back I read J.E. Macdonnell’s World War II naval adventure novel THE BUFFER and really enjoyed it. Recently I noticed that an issue of COMMANDO, the British series of digest-sized graphic novels about war, also has an entry called THE BUFFER, and it was written by one of my favorite authors, Brent Towns. Well, you don’t have to hit this old boy over the head. I immediately grabbed the Kindle version of that issue and read it, too.

The characters and story are completely different, of course, no relation to Macdonnell’s novel. In this version, the Buffer is Michael O’Rourke, a chief petty officer on the Australian destroyer Norse. O’Rourke has issues with his temper, and whenever the Norse is in port, he’s constantly getting into fights and thrown into the brig by the MPs. He’s a top-notch sailor, though. When the destroyer encounters a Japanese submarine while patrolling and is sunk, O’Rourke and one other sailor are the only survivors. Other members of the crew would have made it if the sub hadn’t surfaced and killed them all with machine gun fire.

O’Rourke and his companion make it ashore on an island where they’re found by an Australian coastwatcher. A team of Australian commandos come into play, too, because they’re on the island to carry out a vital mission. Unfortunately, O’Rourke’s volatile temper endangers not only that mission but all of their lives. Can he get control of himself long enough to keep from costing them everything?

I’ve said it before, but man, Brent Towns knows how to spin a yarn. The pace in this one is almost non-stop, but in the midst of all that action he also manages to create some compelling characters. The art is by Paolo Ongaro and does a good job of keeping the story rocketing along. THE BUFFER is half naval adventure, half jungle warfare, and Towns and Ongaro capture both very well. I had a great time reading it, and if you’re a fan of fast-moving World War II fiction, I give it a high recommendation.

By the way, while I was there I bought all the other issues of COMMANDO scripted by Towns that I hadn’t already bought and read, so there’ll probably be more of these reviews coming up in the near future.

#437

I just sent novel #437 to my editor. I'm creeping closer to 450. This is only my fifth novel this year, a far cry from the old days but still pretty productive. And I'm already making plans for next year. I may be old, but I still have some pages left in me.

Review: A Crooked Mile - L.D. Whitney

Some years I try to read some horror fiction during October for Halloween, and other years I just ignore it. This year I’m kind of in the mood for some spooky stuff, so when I came across this new novella from L.D. Whitney, I didn’t hesitate to give it a try. I enjoyed the prehistoric adventure novella I read by him a few weeks ago, so I had high hopes for A CROOKED MILE.

Set in the early years of the Twentieth Century, this yarn is narrated by the editor of the weekly newspaper in Wilmarth, Nebraska, a small farming and ranching community. It seems there’s a long-running boundary dispute between the owners of two adjoining homesteads, and one of them has hired a surveyor to try to settle the matter. Now that surveyor has disappeared while out on the plains mapping the boundary, and the local sheriff’s deputy sets out to investigate and try to find the missing man. That investigation leads to some strange happenings, several violent deaths, and an explanation—if you can call it that—that’s downright otherworldly.

This is a really good story. Whitney’s prose has a deliberately Lovecraftian tone to it without being a slavish imitation, and he does a fine job of capturing the feeling of the setting and time period. A CROOKED MILE proves that the windswept plains of Nebraska can be just as creepy as New England. I’d love to see more like this from Whitney, who demonstrates that he’s just as adept at horror as he is at adventure fiction. This story is available in an e-book edition on Amazon, and I give it a high recommendation. It’s a very good start to my horror reading this month.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Adventures, February 1941

I always think of Emmett Watson in relation to his covers for various Munsey pulps, but he did some work for other houses, too, such as this cover for THRILLING ADVENTURES. It's not one of his best, but it's okay. And the contents look pretty good, too. The lead story is by my old editor and mentor, Sam Merwin Jr. It's always nice to see Sam featured on a cover. Also on hand are Louis L'Amour (with a Turk Madden yarn), Ray Cummings, Rolland Lynch, Whit Ellsworth (before he was the editor of all the Superman titles at DC), and a couple of lesser-known authors, Jack Terry and Clay Perry, who appear to have no connection other than the fact that their names rhyme.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Speed Western Stories, November 1945

I'm pretty sure the cover on this issue of SPEED WESTERN STORIES is by H.W. Scott. There's a little bit of a signature visible at the very bottom of the cover, and from what I can see, I think it matches Scott's signature. And the painting just looks like his work to me. He was the first one I thought of before I spotted the portion of a signature, so maybe I'm letting that influence me. But in the long run, it doesn't really matter, does it? It's a pretty good cover no matter who painted it. Inside this issue are stories by Laurence Donovan, Giff Cheshire, Charles Handley, and house-names Paul Hanna and Max Neilson. Probably some entertaining ones, too. 

Review: Beagle Scented Murder - Frank Gruber

I enjoyed that Frank Gruber novel I read a couple of weeks ago so much that I wanted to read something else by him. It’s unusual that I revisit an author so quickly, but it happens. I picked up BEAGLE SCENTED MURDER, published originally in hardcover by Rinehart in 1946 and reprinted in paperback in 1973 by Belmont Tower under the title MARKET FOR MURDER. Neither of those titles really fit the book, in my opinion, but as for the novel itself . . . man, I loved it.

This is the second of three books in a short series featuring Los Angeles private detective Otis Beagle and his assistant, Joe Peel. Beagle and Peel are, to put mildly, somewhat shady. They’re not above bending the law to promote cases they can take, such as in this novel where Peel approaches a previous client, a man who was a victim of the ol’ badger game, and convinces him that he needs the agency’s services again. Beagle and Peel are just looking for a fast buck, of course, but what they get instead are a couple of murders, trouble with the law, and violent encounters with various gangsters. Joe Peel gets knocked out twice. Otis Beagle gets taken for a ride. Naturally, there are several good-looking dames involved, too.

This is exactly the sort of book I grew up reading and loving, and it reminds me of two other series that are long-time favorites. The pairing of Otis Beagle and Joe Peel is very reminiscent of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, but even more so of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. The writing isn’t as good as Rex Stout, and the plotting isn’t as complex as Erle Stanley Gardner, but BEAGLE SCENTED MURDER comes close in both respects. The main difference is that this book is written in third person rather than first, but other than that, Joe Peel really reminds me of Donald Lam. He does nearly all the heavy lifting in solving this case, despite the fact that Otis Beagle owns the agency.

Another thing I enjoyed about this novel is that part of the plot revolves around a rare dime novel. Now, I’m not much of a dime novel reader and I don’t collect them at all, but I know enough about them to know that Gruber was very familiar with the subject. I didn’t spot any mistakes, and the various comments about collectors put a smile on my face more than once.

In case you can’t tell, I had an absolutely great time reading this book. It’s not in print, and copies of the hardback seem to be pretty uncommon. You can find the paperback, and it’s only moderately expensive. If you ever run across either edition, I’d say grab it. And if you already have a copy on your shelves and haven’t read it yet, I give it a very high recommendation. I’m going to have to read the other two books in the series soon.

Review: Misfit Lil Robs the Bank - Chap O'Keefe (Keith Chapman)

I’m a long-time fan of the Misfit Lil series by Chap O’Keefe (who’s really our old friend, writer and editor Keith Chapman, of course), so it’s a real pleasure when I come across one that I haven’t read before. MISFIT LIL ROBS THE BANK was published originally in hardcover by Robert Hale as part of the Black Horse Westerns series in 2009. It was reprinted in a large print edition by Ulverscroft in 2010, and now it’s available again in e-book and paperback editions.

Lilian Goodnight’s friend and mentor, army scout Jackson Farraday, is out of town guiding a scientific expedition, so there’s no one around to provide wise counsel when Lil takes up with reckless, hotheaded cowboy Lucky M’Cline. Their misadventures get them in trouble with the law, and some of the upright citizens of Silver Vein, Utah (including a young woman who’s jealous because she thinks Lil took Lucky away from her) convince her father, rancher Ben Goodnight, to turn her over to the care of a French physician visiting the area, Dr. Francois Guiscard. Guiscard, you see, is famous for using hypnotism and other new-fangled treatments to cure females of hysteria and other psychological ailments. Dr. Guiscard, it is hoped, will be able to cure Lil of her troublemaking ways.

I think we all know what’s going to happen here. Guiscard isn’t the brilliant doctor he pretends to be, although he is a master hypnotist. Lil winds up in more trouble than ever and back behind bars, charged with bank robbery and murder. She and Lucky have to break out of jail and track down the real villain to clear Lil’s name.

One of the great things about Keith Chapman’s Westerns is that his writing has a distinctive voice. Nobody else would write these books exactly the way he does. As a result, he always comes up with great characters and plots that spin traditional elements in fresh and compelling ways. MISFIT LIL ROBS THE BANK races along in a fast, entertaining fashion, and I had a great time reading it. If you’re looking for an enjoyable, somewhat offbeat Western, I give it a high recommendation.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Ace G-Man Stories, October 1942

This issue of ACE G-MAN STORIES features a striking cover by Rafael De Soto. The lead story is a Suicide Squad novelette by Emile C. Tepperman. I've read several stories in this series and really enjoyed all of them. Kerrigan, Murdoch, and Klaw make quite a team, and Tepperman's stories are always fast moving. Another top-notch writer, Day Keene, has a story in this issue, and rounding things out are yarns by lesser-known but prolific pulpsters Don James, Harry Lee Fellinge, and Edward S. Williams.