Review: Arizona Outlaw - Bayne Hobart

The last thing drifting young cowboy Lance Harvey wants is trouble with the law, but when he rides into the town of Elkhorn, Arizona, he finds him unwillingly mixed up in a bank robbery and then on the run from the law.  Fleeing from this injustice, he winds up in the settlement of Black Rock, where he’s promptly accused of being a mysterious murderer who dubs himself The Avenger. Several prominent citizens have been killed, and the town is gripped by fear and eager to blame the first possible suspect who comes along, namely Lance. He just can’t seem to win for losing.

But since he’s the protagonist of ARIZONA OUTLAW, a novel by Donald Bayne Hobart published by Arcadia House in 1961, you know he’ll untangle all the strands of this dangerous mess eventually and discover not only the true Identity of The Avenger but also the bad guy behind a seemingly unconnected stagecoach robbery and murder. He might even find the bank robbers who got him in trouble with the law in the first place!

After the end of the pulp era during which he wrote dozens of novels and hundreds of shorter pieces of fiction, mostly Westerns but quite a few detective and sports yarns, too, Donald Bayne Hobart continued writing for digest magazines and for library-market publishers such as Arcadia House. On the cover of ARIZONA OUTLAW, he’s by-lined only as Hobart; on the title page and the inside flap of the dust jacket, he’s Bayne Hobart. But we know this is really the prolific pulpster Donald Bayne Hobart. His style had changed slightly from the days he was writing more Masked Rider novels than anyone else, but the later novel is still recognizably his work. It’s a little milder, with more talk and not as much action as in his pulp efforts, but that’s common for an aging author. I see it in my own work. What hasn’t changed is Hobart’s ability to create a likable protagonist and move a story along at a fairly brisk pace. And the action scenes are still well done, if not as prevalent.

I enjoyed ARIZONA OUTLAW and I’m glad I have several more of Hobart’s late-career Western novels from Arcadia House on hand to read. It’s not a great Western, but I had a good time reading it and if you’re a fan of traditional Westerns, you certainly might, as well.