THE EASY GUN is one of those novels that comes out of
nowhere and takes you by surprise. Published by Fawcett Gold Medal in 1970 and
promptly forgotten, it’s about 95% of a great Western. As for the unfortunate
other 5% . . . well, more about that later.
The story begins in El Paso with Big John Easy, a brawling gambler/con man/outlaw who’s trying to go straight because he knows he’s set a bad example for his 20-year-old son, also named John but known as Little Easy. The name is ironic, because Little Easy is a massive six-and-a-half foot tall bruiser, even bigger and tougher than Big John.
A dispute with a cattle buyer/gunfighter known as Long Gone Magoffin (this book is full of great character names) leaves Big John dead and Little Easy on the trail of the killer. Little Easy doesn’t know Magoffin’s name, but he knows the man he’s after carries a gun with a fancy silver decoration on its black grips. The trail leads to Ellsworth, Kansas, where Magoffin works for the villainous Porter Jessup, a bizarre character who’s been in a wheelchair all his life because of his crippled legs, but that doesn’t stop him from being truly evil and establishing a criminal empire in Ellsworth, aided by his mute, giant, former prizefighter henchman Burgoo.
If you’re worried that I’m giving away too much of the plot, all this happens very quickly, and anyway, the real appeal of THE EASY GUN is the way Parsons takes a whole heap of Western stereotypes (there’s even a crusading newspaper editor who happens to be a blond, beautiful young woman) and turns most of them upside down. Hardly anybody turns out to be exactly what you’d expect them to be, although the plot plays out in a fairly predictable fashion, up to a point. The writing is very good for the most part, leading up to a violent, epic climax.
And that’s where THE EASY GUN drops the ball. Parsons rushes through the ending, devoting only a few paragraphs to the apocalyptic battle that should have been much more than it is. The last few pages of the book don’t work at all, as far as I’m concerned. Earlier, Parsons had played very fast and loose with the history and geography of Texas, which bothered me, but I would have been willing to overlook that because I was really enjoying his style and characters. That ending, though . . . I just can’t see it.
E.M. Parsons was best known as a TV writer, turning out scripts for various Western and detective series in the Fifties and Sixties. As far as I can tell, he published only three novels, all Westerns: TEXAS HELLER, from Dell in 1959; FARGO, from Gold Medal in 1968; and THE EASY GUN, also from Gold Medal in 1970, the same year he passed away. I have copies of the other two but haven’t read them yet. I will, based on all the things I liked about THE EASY GUN. Maybe I’ll like the endings better in the others. And it’s certainly possible somebody else might think the ending of THE EASY GUN is just fine. Your mileage, as the saying goes, may vary.
The story begins in El Paso with Big John Easy, a brawling gambler/con man/outlaw who’s trying to go straight because he knows he’s set a bad example for his 20-year-old son, also named John but known as Little Easy. The name is ironic, because Little Easy is a massive six-and-a-half foot tall bruiser, even bigger and tougher than Big John.
A dispute with a cattle buyer/gunfighter known as Long Gone Magoffin (this book is full of great character names) leaves Big John dead and Little Easy on the trail of the killer. Little Easy doesn’t know Magoffin’s name, but he knows the man he’s after carries a gun with a fancy silver decoration on its black grips. The trail leads to Ellsworth, Kansas, where Magoffin works for the villainous Porter Jessup, a bizarre character who’s been in a wheelchair all his life because of his crippled legs, but that doesn’t stop him from being truly evil and establishing a criminal empire in Ellsworth, aided by his mute, giant, former prizefighter henchman Burgoo.
If you’re worried that I’m giving away too much of the plot, all this happens very quickly, and anyway, the real appeal of THE EASY GUN is the way Parsons takes a whole heap of Western stereotypes (there’s even a crusading newspaper editor who happens to be a blond, beautiful young woman) and turns most of them upside down. Hardly anybody turns out to be exactly what you’d expect them to be, although the plot plays out in a fairly predictable fashion, up to a point. The writing is very good for the most part, leading up to a violent, epic climax.
And that’s where THE EASY GUN drops the ball. Parsons rushes through the ending, devoting only a few paragraphs to the apocalyptic battle that should have been much more than it is. The last few pages of the book don’t work at all, as far as I’m concerned. Earlier, Parsons had played very fast and loose with the history and geography of Texas, which bothered me, but I would have been willing to overlook that because I was really enjoying his style and characters. That ending, though . . . I just can’t see it.
E.M. Parsons was best known as a TV writer, turning out scripts for various Western and detective series in the Fifties and Sixties. As far as I can tell, he published only three novels, all Westerns: TEXAS HELLER, from Dell in 1959; FARGO, from Gold Medal in 1968; and THE EASY GUN, also from Gold Medal in 1970, the same year he passed away. I have copies of the other two but haven’t read them yet. I will, based on all the things I liked about THE EASY GUN. Maybe I’ll like the endings better in the others. And it’s certainly possible somebody else might think the ending of THE EASY GUN is just fine. Your mileage, as the saying goes, may vary.
7 comments:
A wonderful book which has long been one of my all-time favorites. On my website, I actually list it as one of my favorite top fifty westerns. I've read TEXAS HELLER by the same author and have FARGO on my reading pile, but certainly TEXAS HELLER never even came close to the originality and power of THE EASY GUN.
Guess I better check it out
I've seen THE EASY GUN in thrift stories many times and I passed on it. Now, I wish I bought a copy. This sounds like a book I should track down.
Sometimes try Fargo, a very good one in my opinion, probably the best of the three!
All the best,
Tiziano Agnelli
I forgot to say that E.M.Parsons wrote a thriller "The Dark of Summer", (Avon T-541) 1961
All the best,
Tiziano Agnelli
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 $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 and one western, "Texas Heller," under his own name. After his release in 1960, he wrote one novel ("Dark of Summer") and several westerns ("Fargo," "The Easy Gun") under his own name and also contributed scripts for many TV series, including Sea Hunt, Cheyenne, Ripcord, Bonanza, The Dakotas, The Virginian and Flipper.
Thanks, Lee. I knew about his screenwriting career and his Philip Race novels but had no idea about his wild early days!
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