Review: The Rider From Hell - Robert Ormond Case

I’ve seen the name Robert Ormond Case many, many times on the covers of Western pulps and on their Table of Contents pages. He wrote the lead novella in the August 1934 issue of STAR WESTERN, which I featured recently in a Saturday Morning Western Pulp post. Thinking I really ought to read something by him, I checked to see if anything was available in e-book editions, and to my surprise, the very novella I’d just mentioned was not only available as an e-book reprint, I already owned it and had completely forgotten that I did.

Well, I’m not one to ignore an omen like that, so I promptly read “The Rider From Hell”, which is almost long enough to be considered an actual novel, as it’s billed in its STAR WESTERN appearance.

If I had to guess, I’d say this yarn is set somewhere around the turn of the Twentieth Century. Two adventurers from Texas, seasoned frontiersman John Thurston and his young friend Dal Givens, are captured south of the border while smuggling ammunition to Mexican revolutionaries. They’re put on trial and thrown into a Mexican prison from which no gringo has ever come out alive, let alone escaped. The commandant of the prison has an idea, though: he knows the prisoners have stashed $5000 in gold somewhere north of the Rio Grande in Texas, so he’ll set up an “escape” for one of them, who will retrieve the gold and then return to the prison to ransom his friend. Dal Givens is the one who will go, leaving John Thurston locked up in the hellhole for the time being.

Of course, things don’t work out that way. Givens never returns with the ransom, and a spy for the commandant brings back the news that the young man has rejoined the outlaw gang with which he and Thurston used to run. Filled with hate at being double-crossed and abandoned like this, Thurston vows to escape for real, track down Givens, and have his revenge on his former partner.

I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to reveal that Thurston does get away and try to carry out his plan, but since this is one of those stories where very little is what it first appears to be, Case throws in plot twist after plot twist on the way to an inevitable showdown. Do some of these twists stretch credibility just a tad too much and verge on melodrama? Well, yeah, they do. Did I care? Not at all. Case makes the reader want to believe these things are possible, and so they do.

“The Rider From Hell” reminds me very much of the work of Case’s contemporary Frederick Faust, especially the physical and psychological torment through which he puts his characters. In fact, if I hadn’t known who wrote this one, I might well have believed it’s a previously unknown Max Brand yarn. This really makes me want to read more by Case. I didn’t know anything about him, so here’s some biographical info I found on-line.

Robert Ormond Case was a well-known Oregon author and a prominent, long-time resident of Portland. He was born in Dallas, Texas in 1895 and moved to Portland as a boy. He graduated from Tualatin Academy in Forest Grove, Oregon and went on to attend the University of Oregon.

In 1917, while a sophomore at the University, Case enlisted in the U.S. Army. He served 22 months with the 65th Artillery, CAC, including 52 consecutive days at the front. Case returned to U.O. and received a B.A. in 1920. During his years at the university he was a member of the Delta Tau Delta social fraternity, Sigma Delta Chi honorary journalistic society, and Sigma Upsilon honorary fiction society. In addition he was a member of the Cross-Roads philosophical society and founder of a campus humor magazine.

After his graduation from the University of Oregon. Case went to work as a reporter for the Portland Morning Oregonian. In 1921 he served as financial editor. From 1922 to 1925 he was involved in the Oregon State Chamber of Commerce. His career as a free-lance writer began in 1926 and soon thereafter published his first western, historically-inspired stories. He is best remembered as a writer of western stories, his most well-known dating from the 1930s through the 1950s. He wrote fourteen books and over 200 novelettes. In 1944 he received a Peabody award for the radio scripts of Song of Columbia. Most of Case's serials and short stories were written for national magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post, Collier's and Country Gentleman.

Case spent most of his mature life in Portland, Oregon with periods of residency in New York and California. In Portland he was a member of the school board as well as the City Club and the Rotarians. He was a prominent member of the state Republican Party, particularly as a leader of the Conservative wing during the time of Wayne Morse. He spent the final years of his life in Oakland, California, where he died on 27 March 1964.

“The Rider From Hell” appears to be Case’s only fiction available in an e-book edition, but used copies of some of his novels are readily available and fairly inexpensive, and there are quite a few pulps containing his stories to be found on the Internet Archive. Like a lot of other Western fiction from that era, his work may not resonate with some modern readers, but I flat-out loved this story and give it a very high recommendation.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Adventures, March 1939

Pith helmet alert! I think the cover on this issue of THRILLING ADVENTURES may be by Richard Lyon, who did a lot of them for various Thrilling Group pulps in the Thirties. It's a striking cover, that's for sure. An oddity about this issue is that all the authors except one are best remembered for their Westerns: Philip Ketchum, Edward Parrish Ware, Rolland Lynch, Ben Conlon, and Harold F. Cruickshank. The one author who wasn't a prolific contributor to the Western pulps, Ray Millholland, is the only one who appears to have written a traditional Western yarn in this issue. I say "appears to" because I'm just basing that on the story titles. I don't have this issue and haven't read it. The Cruickshank story is kind of a Western, since it's an animal story and part of a series about a white wolf. I really ought to read more stories from THRILLING ADVENTURES. Most of the issues look great!

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, September 1948

This is a pulp I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, with an exciting and dramatic cover by Sam Cherry, who always delivered the goods. And I’ll have more to say about this cover later.

This issue leads off with another Tombstone and Speedy novelette by W.C. Tuttle, “The Hunches of Tombstone Jones”. In this one, our intrepid range detective duo aren’t on the trail of rustlers for a change. As a favor to their boss at the Cattlemen’s Association, they set out to investigate a case of high-grading at a gold mine. But when they arrive on the scene, they find the mine owner and his lawyer both dead. Is it murder? What does it have to do with the kidnapping of an inept young drummer from back east who sells ladies’ ready-to-wear goods? Why’s everybody so interested in a beautiful young woman and her son? Tombstone and Speedy will untangle all those threads, of course, with a lot of banter and gunplay along the way. After being a little disappointed in the last yarn I read in this series, “The Hunches of Tombstone Jones” really hits the mark. The dialogue is funny, the action is good, the detective work, mostly by Tombstone, is canny, and the plot hangs together nicely. This is a top-notch Tombstone and Speedy story.

“Catch Rope” is the third and final story in Chuck Martin’s short-lived series about crippled range detective Jim Bowen. It’s a good hardboiled Western yarn in which Bowen goes after a gang of rustlers who have kidnapped a rancher. Martin is nearly always worth reading, and this is an enjoyable story. I hoped it would bring some resolution to Jim Bowen’s continuing storyline, but it doesn’t, which is a shame.

Nels Leroy Jorgensen started out as a hardboiled crime and mystery writer in BLACK MASK before concentrating on Westerns later in his career, and I’ve enjoyed a number of his stories in the past. “Bullet Trail to Bexar”, his novelette in this issue, gets off to a promising start. It’s set in Texas in the spring of 1836, during the Texas revolution, and is about a young Texan on a mission to San Antonio. He gets saddled with a beautiful young woman along the way, and she has an agenda of her own. This should be a good story, but it’s riddled with anachronisms and blatant historical errors, as well as continuity glitches such as the young woman’s stepfather suddenly becoming her half-brother for the rest of the story. I wound up abandoning this one halfway through. It just has too many problems for it to be entertaining to me.

“Killer, Here I Come” is by Robert J. Hogan, best-known for the G-8 series, of course, but he wrote quite a few Westerns as well. This is the second story in this issue where the protagonist has a crippled leg. In this case, he’s not a range detective but rather a saddlemaker and veterinarian. He’s a very likable character, and you can’t help but root for him as he has to deal with an old enemy turned bank robber. I didn’t like this one whole-heartedly—there’s some cruelty to animals in it, and I have a hard time with that—but it’s a pretty good story overall.

Tom Parsons was a Thrilling Group house-name. The story under that by-line in this issue, “Born to Hang”, is the one illustrated by Cherry’s cover. Actually, I strongly suspect this is another case of a story being written to match an existing cover painting, because the scene lines up perfectly with the story. I also think there’s a very good chance the story was written by editor Charles S. Strong, who was also Western writer Chuck Stanley, author of a regular non-fiction column in EXCITING WESTERN. It’s a good yarn about a drifter framed for murder, and its only real drawback is that the ending isn’t as dramatic as it might have been. Still an enjoyable story, though.

Arizona Ranger Navajo Tom Raine has become one of my favorite Western pulp characters. In “Ride the Ghost Down, Ranger!”, he’s sent to find out who’s been attacking and burning out some homesteaders, which leads him to a mystery involving the inheritance of a valuable ranch. It’s a good story, and I’m convinced it’s the work of Lee Bond writing under the house-name Jackson Cole. Bond created the Navajo Tom Raine series and wrote more of the stories than anyone else, although C. William Harrison contributed quite a few, as well. This one ends with a big shootout between Raine and multiple bad guys, one of the trademarks of his stories.

The issue wraps up with “Reba Rides Alone” by D.B. Newton, one of my favorite Western authors. Of course, I can’t see that title without thinking about the country singer, but in this case, Reba is Mike Reba, a veteran outlaw who’s wounded and on the run when he encounters a young man determined to take up the owlhoot trail. This story is kind of predictable, but it’s very well written, and like all of Newton’s work, it’s worth reading.

This is a good issue overall of EXCITING WESTERN with a strong Tombstone and Speedy entry, a solid Navajo Tom Raine story, and the other stories are all okay with the exception of Jorgensen’s. If you have a copy, it’s certainly worth taking down from the shelves. If you don’t, the whole issue is also available on the Internet Archive.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Dancing Aztecs - Donald E. Westlake

I’ve read a lot of Donald E. Westlake’s novels over the years, but he was prolific enough that there are still a lot of them I haven’t read. Being in the mood to sample his work again, the one that came easiest to hand was DANCING AZTECS, a stand-alone comic thriller.

The set-up is fairly complicated. A corrupt businessman and a low-level crook are trying to smuggle into the country an ancient Aztec statue in the shape of a dancing priest. The statue is about a foot tall, made of gold, and has emeralds for eyes. It’s hidden among a shipment of copies that are intended as awards to be given out at a luncheon to the members of a club in New York City. Of course, there’s a foul-up, and the statue that’s worth a million dollars is given out in the place of one of the copies. Various people find out about this and start trying to find the valuable statue. Chaos of a humorous nature ensues, along with a considerable amount of action and romance.

What’s left to say about Westlake that hasn’t been said? You already know his style is smooth and very readable (although he does some things in this book with the timeline and POV shifts that most writers wouldn’t attempt – and makes them work). He weaves together a complex plot and a huge number of characters and somehow keeps everything straight so that it all makes sense. Not an easy task. DANCING AZTECS is very funny in places, and you can’t help but root for the characters, even the ones who are crooked. Overall, I prefer Westlake’s serious books to his comedies, but just about everything he wrote is worth reading and DANCING AZTECS is no exception. Reading it is a highly entertaining way to spend some time.

(This post first appeared in a somewhat different form on January 18, 2009, not long after Donald E. Westlake died. It was his passing that prompted me to read something by him. And it's still true there are quite a few of his books I haven't read. I probably ought to do something about that.)

Review: Men's Adventure Quarterly #14: The Bigfoot Issue! - Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, eds.

I’m no expert on Bigfoot and his cryptid cousins, by any means. I remember reading a comic strip when I was a kid where the characters encountered the Abominable Snowman, and it wasn’t played for laughs like the Bumble in RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER. In fact, it scared the crap out of me. But I don’t remember what the comic strip was. If any of you recall a comic strip featuring an Abominable Snowman storyline in the 1960-65 period, let me know!

Then there’s THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK, the Seventies docu-drama film about Arkansas’s Fouke Monster. One of my best friends had family in that area and visited often, and he swore the monster was real, although he had never seen it.

So I was ready to be educated about Bigfoot, making me part of the prime audience for the 14th issue of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY: THE BIGFOOT ISSUE! From the talented editorial due of Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, this volume leans more on non-fiction than some of the previous issues of this great publication. There are lengthy articles from well-known zoologist Ivan T. Sanderson, current cryptid expert Loren Coleman, and John W. Burns, one of the first authors to investigate the mystery that came to be known as Bigfoot. Also to be found in this issue are articles about Bigfoot’s appearances in movies, including the above-mentioned THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK, and other media. I had no idea there have been so many movies over the years featuring Bigfoot and his assorted cousins! Other articles detail Bigfoot’s several guest-starring turns on THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and THE BIONIC WOMAN, as well as the series BIGFOOT AND WILDBOY. I remember hearing about those episodes of THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and THE BIONIC WOMAN, but I don’t recall watching them back when those episodes were new and have never seen them since, so this was all new and very entertaining for me.

And of course, there’s some wild, men’s adventure magazine fiction about discovering and fighting Bigfoot-like creatures, and as always, I had a great time reading those yarns.

As for my own encounters with Bigfoot, I don’t have any. But about forty years ago, Bill Crider and I collaborated on chapters-and-outline for a men’s adventure novel involving a Yeti. Unfortunately, it never sold. Going back farther to 1969, I lived only a few miles from the nature refuge where the Lake Worth Monster, sometimes called the Goatman, had the whole area worked up for the whole summer. You can read about that here. I tend to be skeptical about such things, but you couldn’t have gotten me to go out to Greer Island that summer. No, sir. Since then, people I know have claimed the whole thing was a hoax and they know who was behind it. Could be. But I just don’t know.

To get back to MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY: THE BIGFOOT ISSUE!, this is another great issue of one of my favorite publications, and I give it a very high recommendation. You can find it on Amazon or buy it directly from the publisher.

(Apologies for rambling around a little more than usual. Seems to be the way my brain works these days.)

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Eddie the Eagle (2016)

Regular readers of this blog know that we enjoy inspirational, based-on-a-true-story sports movies around here, and 2016’s EDDIE THE EAGLE certainly fits the category, as well as being a Movie I’ve Missed Until Now. It’s the story of Eddie Edwards (played by Taron Egerton), the British ski jumper whose dream was to compete in the Olympics ever since he was a sickly little boy. A lot of things get in his way besides his own lack of talent, mostly the bureaucrats in charge of the British Olympic team and later the International Olympic Committee. Helping Eddie overcome these obstacles is his reluctant coach, a washed-up American ski jumper (Hugh Jackman) whose career never recovered from a falling out with his coach, played by Christopher Walken.

As you can see, this movie has a pretty good cast, and it’s well-made and moves right along. Evidently it’s only loosely based on what really happened, but that’s not a problem as far as I’m concerned. It’s an entertaining little film, not one of the classics of the genre, maybe, but I enjoyed it and think it’s worth watching.

Review: Pendergast: The Beginning - Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

I know a number of people who are fans of the long-running series by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child about eccentric FBI agent A.X.L. Pendergast, but I’d never read any of the books and with more than twenty entries in the series, it was another one it looked like I might never get around to trying.

But then while I was at the library I came across a large print edition of the latest novel, PENDERGAST: THE BEGINNING, which is obviously a prequel to the rest of the books. So I thought, as I often do, sure, why not?

This novel is set in the Eighties and Nineties and centers around Pendergast’s early days working in the FBI’s local field office in New Orleans, which happens to be Pendergast’s home town. He’s teamed with veteran agent Dwight Chambers, who serves as Pendergast’s mentor. He tries to, anyway. Pendergast, with his mysterious, somewhat sinister background and seeming mastery of just about everything, is not one to take a back seat to anybody.

They investigate a cold case that winds up leading them to a number of murders carried out by a serial killer who has the odd tendency of amputating his victims’ right arms. By the middle of the book, they’ve tracked down the killer and are barreling toward a showdown with him, when suddenly the whole thrust of the book shifts dramatically and what seems at first like a bizarre but relatively simple case takes on a whole new layer.

First of all, Pendergast is a great character. Not having read the rest of the series, I don’t know how much of the stuff that’s hinted at in this book is fully revealed later on, but I’m intrigued by him, that’s for sure. Preston and Child do a good job with all the characters, in fact, and their dialogue is pretty good. My only complaint about their writing is that it’s so slick and smooth it becomes a little bland at times, which is the same thing I’ve found in a lot of current thriller writers. Too many of the books sound like they could’ve been written by anybody, with nothing distinctive about the author’s voice. I don’t think Preston and Child fall victim to this sameness as much as some, but it’s there.

That wasn’t enough to keep me from enjoying this book quite a bit. I really raced through the second half to find out what was going to happen. And it’s a nice touch that the epilogue is taken from the novel RELIC, the first published book in the Pendergast series, firmly establishing the series’ continuity.

I liked this one enough I think I’m going to have to read more. Whether I’ll ever make my way through the entire series is pretty debatable, especially at my age, but you never know. If you’re already a fan, I’m sure you’ll want to read PENDERGAST. If you’re just starting the series, well, if I’m any indication, it works just fine as an introduction. It's available in e-book, hardcover, and audio editions. Recommended.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Gold Seal Detective, January 1936

I don't know if the cover painting by Rafael DeSoto on this issue of GOLD SEAL DETECTIVE was meant to illustrate the story "Rough-'Em-Up Radigan", but if it wasn't, it should have been! This is actually the first of five novelettes starring Rough-'Em-Up Radigan by Clark Aiken, who was really the great pulpster Frederick C. Davis. I've suggested before that we need a reprint volume called THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF ROUGH-'EM-UP RADIGAN, and I stand by that. Also in this issue are stories by Norman A. Daniels (once as himself and once as by David M. Norman), Paul Chadwick, Frederick C. Painton, Tom Roan, and Darrell Jordan. If you want to check out this issue, it's available on the Internet Archive. I've downloaded it myself, and I hope I get around to reading it in the relatively near future.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Star Western, August 1934

There was a brief discussion last weekend about whether the TOP-NOTCH cover I posted Sunday was painted by William F. Soare. Well, here's a STAR WESTERN cover we know was by Soare, and I like it quite a bit. Inside this issue are some fine writers, including Walt Coburn, Ray Nafziger, Cliff Farrell, and Robert E. Mahaffey. The lead story is a novella called "The Rider From Hell" by Robert Ormond Case. I love that title. Case is one of those writers whose name I've seen hundreds of times, if not more, but I don't recall ever reading anything by him. Come to find out, there's an e-book edition of "The Rider From Hell" available, and not only that, I already own the blasted thing! Maybe I'd better get around to reading it, huh? We'll see. 

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Arizona Guns - William MacLeod Raine

With some authors, you can be aware of their work for years, even decades, without ever reading any of it. That’s the way it’s been for me with William MacLeod Raine. If you’re like me and practically grew up in used bookstores during the Sixties and Seventies, you saw plenty of paperback Westerns by Raine. While he was never as popular as Zane Grey, Max Brand, or Louis L’Amour, Raine was prolific and a strong presence in the Western field for many years. Now, of course, he’s barely remembered, and based on ARIZONA GUNS, the first of his novels I’ve read, he deserves to be not only remembered but read.

Born in England in 1871, Raine moved to the American West ten years later and lived through much of the time period about which he wrote. Like Walt Coburn and another English immigrant, Fred East (who wrote as Tom West), Raine was an authentic Westerner with experience as a cowboy before he became a writer. ARIZONA GUNS was originally published in 1919 by Houghton Mifflin under the title A MAN FOUR-SQUARE. There were at least two paperback reprints under the title ARIZONA GUNS, which despite having a classic B-Western sound to it, isn’t appropriate at all. Not one bit of the novel takes place in Arizona, and the only connection is that one of the characters mentions having gone there.

Instead, nearly all the book is set in New Mexico Territory, in the fictional Washington County. If you’re sharp enough to realize that there’s a real county in New Mexico named after a famous president, you’ll have a pretty good idea where this story is going. Yep, this is another fictionalized version of the Billy the Kid saga, with the “Washington County War” taking the place of the real-life Lincoln County War. In Raine’s version, the young hero is named Jim Clanton. After growing up somewhere in the Appalachians and being involved in a feud there, Clanton goes west in search of his enemies who have fled the mountains. He winds up joining a cattle drive up the Pecos, fights outlaws and Indians, becomes friends with a cowboy named Billie Prince, meets up with his old enemies, makes new enemies, romances a couple of beautiful young women, and eventually winds up on the wrong side of the law. By this time, Clanton’s friend Billie Prince has become a lawman, making him the Pat Garrett stand-in for this story, and when Clanton is accused of murdering one of the local cattlemen, Prince has to form a posse and go after him.

Raine veers off from history in various places, so the story winds up being only loosely based on the Lincoln County War. Because of this, he’s able to throw some nice twists into the plot, especially where various romantic triangles are concerned. Romance plays a big part in this book, as was common in Westerns of the time period, especially the bestsellers authored by Zane Grey. ARIZONA GUNS reminds me quite a bit of Grey’s work, in fact, although it’s not nearly as flowery and melodramatic. Raine slips in a dark undertone to an otherwise happy ending, too, which sets it apart from Grey’s novels and the other popular Westerns of the period. The writing is a little old-fashioned in places (what else would you expect from a book written ninety years ago?), but it holds up well, the style tough and spare for the most part.

I’ve always liked Zane Grey’s plots, and when he finally got around to writing action scenes, he produced some corkers, but I also find it hard to wade through the long-winded prose in his books. If you’re the same way, I think you’d enjoy William MacLeod Raine’s novels, at least based on this one. I definitely intend to read more of them.

(This time, for a change, when I said I was going to read more by an author, I actually did. Since this post first appeared on December 12, 2008, I've read four or five more novels by William MacLeod Raine and enjoyed all of them. You can find several different e-book editions of ARIZONA GUNS/A MAN FOUR-SQUARE on Amazon for very affordable prices if you'd care to check it out.)