Saturday, August 01, 2020

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Complete Western Book Magazine, April 1934


That's a pretty nice cover on this issue of COMPLETE WESTERN BOOK MAGAZINE by W.L. House, an artist I'm not familiar with. The complete Western book of the title is "Desert Guns" by William MacLeod Raine, backed up by short stories from B.M. Bower and Joseph T. Kescel, an author who is also unfamiliar to me. I like what I've read by Raine and Bower, although I haven't read extensively from the works of either author. I remember Jory Sherman talking about Bower, who was his great-aunt, I believe. "Aunt Bert", he called her, because her name was Bertha Muzzy Bower.

UPDATE: I discovered that I've featured this pulp before, back in 2012. Well, it was bound to happen eventually and probably has happened before now without me realizing it. The funny thing is, I said almost exactly the same things eight years ago. The more things change, etc., etc. . . .

5 comments:

Robert R. Barrett said...

I've read quite a lot of Raine's novels. My dad who read, pretty much, nothing but westerns, introduced his stories to me. I've got a box of his hardcovers in dust jackets. He started out writing historicals but I've not read any of them. I quite like his stories.

James Reasoner said...

I have a stack of Raine hardcovers, none with dust jackets, unfortunately. I read one of his early historicals, THE PIRATES OF PANAMA, and enjoyed it quite a bit, as I recall.

James Reasoner said...

No, I'm wrong, it's THE PIRATE OF PANAMA, and it's not a historical novel at all. But I did like it:

https://jamesreasoner.blogspot.com/2011/02/forgotten-books-pirate-of-panama.html

Spike said...

Read a bit of Raines. One of his books had a nearly Chapter long fight scene that was brutal. Bower is just plain dull to me, I read 2 or 3 “Chip” novels and gave up.

Kit Prate said...

I loved Bower's Flying U series, which I read from my Dad's stash. And you are right about her being Jory's great aunt. I sent him an original hard cover books, "The Orphan". Charlie Russel did a lot of the illustrations for her books. She served as a great inspiration for a little tomboy growing up on westerns purloined from her Dad and brother. Great reading. In fact, my older brother taught me to read (prior to kindergarten) from her books, as well as Raine's books.