Review: On the Dodge - D.B. Newton

Jim Bannister rides into the town of Antelope, Colorado, on the morning of the Fourth of July, but he’s not there to celebrate. Bannister is a fugitive from the law, the victim of an unjust murder conviction and a death sentence. But he escaped from jail and is now on a quest to clear his name, and there’s a chance that a man he hopes to find in Antelope can help with that goal.

Unfortunately, there’s a range war brewing in the area, and even though the town is full of Independence Day festivities, trouble is lurking right under the surface and quickly crops up, catching Bannister right in the middle of it.

I’ve been a fan of D.B. Newton’s Western novels for more than forty years. I first discovered them in the late Seventies when he was writing hardback Westerns for Doubleday’s Double D line under the pseudonym Dwight Bennett (his first and middle names, of course). It wasn’t long before I found out that he was also a prolific contributor to the Western pulps and even wrote a few of the Jim Hatfield novels in TEXAS RANGERS under the house-name Jackson Cole.

Eventually, when I became a writer myself, my first Westerns were entries in the Stagecoach Station series, which was created by D.B. Newton, who also wrote a number of them. I’ve always liked the fact that I shared a house-name with someone who wrote Jim Hatfield novels.

In the Sixties, Newton wrote an eight-book series for Berkley featuring a hero named Jim Bannister who was a fugitive from the law but not really an outlaw. ON THE DODGE is the first of those novels, all of which are in the process of being reprinted by Piccadilly Publishing. I just read it and thoroughly enjoyed it. Newton drops the reader down at a point where all hell’s fixin’ to bust loose, and I always appreciate an author who doesn’t waste any time getting the story going. Newton is from the same school of Western writing as L.P. Holmes and T.T. Flynn. He uses traditional plots but elevates them to a higher level with fine writing, well-developed characters, and moral and emotional complexity. ON THE DODGE has a real air of Greek tragedy about it, along with plenty of action and a very human and likable protagonist.

I had a paperback copy of the Berkley edition of ON THE DODGE for many years but never got around to reading it. That’s a good thing in a way because now I can read the new editions as they come out from Piccadilly. This one is a superb hardboiled Western that’s available in e-book and paperback editions. It gets a high recommendation from me.