Anybody who has seen one of Lynn Munroe's on-line book catalogs knows that's not your typical book catalog. His latest features the work of the legendary Peter McCurtin, and as usual it's a treasure trove of information (including previously unknown pseudonyms) and great cover scans. If you have any interest at all in paperback Westerns and men's adventure novels from the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties, you really do have to check this out.
On a personal note, I recall buying a copy of the Lassiter novel THE MAN FROM DEL RIO at Lester's Pharmacy, in the edition shown above, and realizing as I was reading it that this wasn't really the same sort of thing as Zane Grey, Max Brand, and Clarence E. Mulford (my main Western reading up to that point). Nice to know it was actually written by Peter McCurtin, possibly in collaboration with George Harmon Smith. If I ever come across a copy of that edition again, I'll probably buy it just for old times' sake.
3 comments:
"Winner of the Mesquite Award" -- too funny! I'm pretty sure I bought MAFIOSO from the newsstand rack, back in the day, but I don't remember a blessed thing about it!
Thanks for shining the spotlight on a fine writer whose work I've always enjoyed and admired.
I’ve long been interested in who wrote which installments in the Lassiter series, primarily because it’s so very uneven. The best books have a hardboiled, grim intensity to them, while the worst were a challenge to read.
I’ve read a lot of Lassiters and, while ditching the weaker ones, I’ve added the ones I liked to my shelves. I’m a little surprised to find that all the keepers were by Peter McCurtin except A Hell of a Way to Die (by the peerless Ben Haas) and Durango Kill, a novel from 1975 that apparently still no one knows who wrote. Durango Kill is very different in flavor than McCurtin’s stuff, but still good fun, with a plot that seems conceived after a grueling binge-watch of the better spaghetti westerns.
There’s still a couple McCurtin Lassiters that I haven’t read. Maybe the Holidays will give me the time to sit down and fix that.
John Hocking
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