New This Week

I picked up some old Westerns the other day, after a couple of weeks of nothing new to report.

DEAD END TRAIL by Norman A. Fox appears to be the first book featuring range detectives Rowdy Dow and Stumpy Grampis. Any resemblance to Roy Rogers and Gabby Hayes is strictly coincidental, I'm sure. I haven't read a lot of Fox's books, but I like his work fairly well.


NIGHT RIDERS by Giff Cheshire is a Leisure Books reprint of two stories from the pulps, "Blood Oath", a novella from .44 WESTERN and the title story, a full-length serial from RANCH ROMANCES.  Cheshire's work is usually pretty good.

SHANNAHAN'S FEUD is by Archie Joscelyn writing under his most common pseudonym, Al Cody. Although his later books are pretty bad, I've liked everything I've read by Joscelyn that's from the Forties and Fifties, and this one was originally published in 1950.


THE COUGAR OF CANYON CABALLO/DEVIL'S DOORSTEP is a double volume of two early Paul Evan Lehman novels. Lehman is always readable and occasionally very good.

SHOOTIN' MELODY is by E.B. Mann, an author I've never read but have meant to get around to for quite a while now. I have one or two other books by him. This one was originally published in 1938.


THE TUCSON TEMPTRESS by Chet Cunningham is #3 in the Agent Brad Spear adult Western series, from 1981.  Thirty years ago? Not possible!


Finally, a handful of Signet double novel reprints of Lewis B. Patten books, all originally published in the Seventies by Doubleday: AMBUSH AT SODA CREEK/MAN OUTGUNNED, A KILLING IN KIOWA/THE FEUD AT CHIMNEY ROCK, DEATH STALKS YELLOWHORSE/THE ORPHANS OF COYOTE CREEK, and HUNT THE MAN DOWN/CHEYENNE CAPTIVES. By this stage of his career, Patten's work was pretty inconsistent. I'll bet there's some good ones among these, though.