Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: North-West Romances, Summer 1941

Nothing like a Norman Saunders cover on an issue of NORTH-WEST ROMANCES. The two go together perfectly. This issue features a story by one of my favorite authors, Frederick Nebel (a reprint from a 1932 issue of ACTION STORIES), as well as yarns by William Byron Mowery, Ralph R. Perry, Owen Finbar (who was really A. DeHerries Smith, who wrote a lot of stories for the Northerns under his own name), Dan O'Rourke (who was also A. DeHerries Smith), Reg Dinsmore, Evan M. Post, and house-name John Starr (quite possibly A. DeHerries Smith, too). I love Northerns and ought to read more of them.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: .44 Western Magazine, February 1941

This fine cover by Albin Henning is another prime example of how you couldn't sit down to enjoy a game of poker in the Old West without a gunfight breaking out. The hombre swinging in on a rope with his gun blazing is a nice twist, though. Some good authors are on hand in this issue of .44 WESTERN MAGAZINE: Stone Cody (Thomas E. Mount), John G. Pearsol, Eli Colter, J.E. Grinstead, Ralph Berard (Victor H. White), and the lesser known Archie Giddings and Jay A. Constant, whose story in this issue is his only credit in the Fictionmags Index.

Review: Montana Bad Man - Roe Richmond

A friend of mine recommended this book to me recently, citing an unusual degree of sexual obsession and angst for a paperback Western published in 1957. Well, I found that intriguing enough to scout out a copy, and that’s it in the scan. I’ve read it now, and my friend was right. MONTANA BAD MAN isn’t as graphic as the Adult Westerns that began appearing a decade or so later, but it’s certainly got a lot more sex in it than you’d expect from a book of its vintage.

The protagonist of this novel (it’s hard to call him the hero) is Faris Dodrill, one of many characters who have somewhat odd names. I don’t know if author Roe Richmond was trying to be more realistic in naming his characters, but if he was, he went a little overboard. That said, I got used to it and it didn’t really bother me. As the book opens, Dodrill is working as the driver of a freight wagon. He and his brother were raised on a ranch in Montana, but after their father was killed by outlaws, they set off on an unsuccessful vengeance quest after the owlhoots. Eventually, they wind up marrying half-sisters whose father owns the freight company. Faris goes to work for his father-in-law while his brother Tucker returns to the family ran to try to keep it going. Faris hates the job, he and his wife have come to despise each other, and she regularly cheats on him with the local deputy sheriff.

Then, in the first of many tragic twists, Faris finds himself on the run from a murder charge with a big bounty on his head. He’s not really guilty, but circumstances keep pushing him farther and farther over the line into becoming an actual rustler and outlaw.

Even though it’s a relatively short book, maybe 60,000 words, MONTANA BAD MAN takes on an epic scale as it covers a year in the life of Faris Dodrill. Faris covers a lot of ground during that time, too, around Montana and Wyoming, visiting Devil’s Tower, the Hole in the Wall, and Cheyenne. He makes friends and enemies, buries murdered friends and loved ones, engages in numerous shootouts, cavorts with several women, and even winds up back on the other side of the law for a time, working for the cattleman’s association as a range detective. It’s all building up a final showdown with the mortal enemies who have harmed him the worst.

Although it’s not quite as much of a kitchen sink book, MONTANA BAD MAN reminds me a little of my favorite Louis L’Amour novel, TO TAKE A LAND, which has that same epic feel and numerous plotlines. Roe Richmond’s work is hit or miss with me, but most of his stand-alone novels and stories are excellent. This novel certainly falls into this category. Only an ending I found somewhat dissatisfying keeps it from being one of the top two or three books I’ve read this year. Richmond’s hardboiled prose is relentless, and his characters, although mostly unlikable, are compelling. Like the T.V. Olsen novel I read a few weeks ago, MONTANA BAD MAN is a thoroughly bleak and grim yarn, but that’s all right some of the time. If you’re a reader of Western noir, this is one of the best I’ve come across, and I give it a high recommendation. It's never been reprinted as far as I know, and I appear to have gotten the last reasonably priced copy on-line, but it's worth keeping your eyes open for one.

Review: American Treasure Hunters: The Hunt for Confederate Gold

I’ve written here before about how much I enjoyed the boy’s adventure series I read as a kid, especially Rick Brant, the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift Jr., and the Three Investigators. As far as I know, that sort of series hasn’t existed for a long time. Until now.

THE HUNT FOR CONFEDERATE GOLD is the first book in a new series called AMERICAN TREASURE HUNTERS, written by Andrew M. Dare and published by Ark Press. The publisher’s website does a better job of summarizing it than I can, so I’m going to quote it:

“Ben Prescott, Porter Rockwell, and Latch McRae couldn’t be more different. Ben is a home-schooled brainiac. Porter is the starting quarterback for the Ridgeport Raiders, and Latch is a grease-smudged prodigy who never saw an engine he couldn’t take apart and set to purring. Yet the three have been friends forever, drawn together by a shared passion: treasure hunting for the forgotten loot of American history. 

During a raucous Fourth of July fireworks battle, the trio stumbles onto a lost Confederate blockade-runner. Locked inside: a rusted safe, a sealed pouch, and the first breadcrumb to a vanished fortune in Confederate government gold, missing since the final days of the War Between the States. 

They’re not alone. A bitter ex-employee of Ben’s father and a well-funded outsider are willing to lie, steal, and threaten to take the treasury for themselves, and wipe out the story of its origin. 

Now the hunters must face danger and work their way through knotty clues and ciphers as they seek a long-lost map drawn in invisible ink on the back of a letter from General Robert E. Lee himself! It’s a map that may point to one of America’s richest lost treasures.”

My reaction to reading this book is pretty simple. If I’d read it when I was 13 years old, I would have thought it’s one of the greatest books ever written. From the perspective of being 60 years on down the road from that point, I still thoroughly enjoyed it and think it’s an excellent yarn. Ben, Porter, and Latch are fine protagonists, and the story moves along at a fast pace through a well-constructed historical mystery.

Of the vintage series I mentioned above, the one I’m most reminded of by THE HUNT FOR CONFEDERATE GOLD is the great Rick Brant series. Like Rick and Scotty in those books, the heroes of this series are old enough and athletic enough to take care of themselves in the action scenes, and there are a few hints of espionage and intrigue, the way Rick and Scotty used to find themselves helping out JANIG, the Joint Army Navy Intelligence Group (that’s right, I remember what the initials stand for after 60 years). The emphasis in this series is more on history than on science, but you get the same mixture of educational stuff with action, mystery, a little romance (that angle is handled quite well), and a little humor.

I enjoyed this book a lot and look forward to the others in the series. It’s available on Amazon in e-book and hardcover editions, or you can get it directly from the publisher’s website here. If you’re looking for a book a teenage boy would find entertaining, or you’re an old geezer revisiting your own reading as a kid, I highly recommend it. 

Movies I've Missed Until Now: The Duchess (2008)

When you’re watching a movie called THE DUCHESS starring Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes (yep, that guy again), you have a pretty good idea what to expect: big hair and low-cut, fancy dresses on the ladies, and powdered wigs, tricorn hats, and puffy shirts for the fellas. That’s what you get in this 2008 historical drama, along with political shenanigans and lurid love affairs. Unfortunately, for a high-class soap opera, THE DUCHESS is pretty slow and stodgy and never works up any real momentum. It’s very well-made and well-acted, and we watched it all the way to the end, but I can’t really recommend it unless you’re a big fan of British period dramas. A few swordfights might have helped it a lot.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Wings, Winter 1948/49

In the late Forties, WINGS got away from the usual aerial dogfights that most aviation/air war pulps used and started putting good-looking women on their covers, probably in a shameless attempt to boost sales. I have a hunch it would have worked on me, because I like this cover quite a bit. I have no idea who painted it. The authors inside are pretty darned good, too, starting with iconic aviation pulpster Arch Whitehouse, who in this issue brings back his characters the Casket Crew, the stars of a series going back to 1931. A volume of early Casket Crew stories has been published by Age of Aces Books, and of course I have a copy, but equally inevitably, I haven't read it yet. Also on hand in this issue are Walt Sheldon, a prolific pulp writer and a well-respected paperbacker, J.L. Bouma, best remembered for his Westerns, Alfred Coppel Jr., known for his science fiction and mainstream novels, and an assortment of names unfamiliar to me: Cornelius Morgan, Scott Sumner, Frank Harvey, and Joe James. Whitehouse, Sheldon, Coppell, and Bouma would make this issue worthwhile for me.

UPDATE: Eagle-eyed commenter b.t. not only identified this cover as probably being by Norman Saunders, he even provided the information that Saunders based it on an earlier cover from WINGS COMICS #93 by Bob Lubbers, which you can see below. Many thanks!

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ranch Romances, Second August Number, 1957

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, and it’s in halfway decent shape for a change. The cover art is by Sam Cherry. Most of his covers aren’t signed, but you can see his signature in the lower right corner of this one, although it’s backwards, meaning the art was flipped.

Edwin Booth is a familiar name to me because he wrote at least a dozen Western novels, many of them published in the Ace Doubles line. I don’t recall ever reading anything by him until now. He’s the author of this issue’s lead novella, “Once a Killer”, which finds the protagonist, Fred Irwin, returning to the hometown he left ten years earlier after killing a man in a gunfight. Everybody figured that meant he had turned into an outlaw, but in reality, he’s become a hard-working cowboy and finally saved up enough money to buy a ranch of his own. Unfortunately, he finds himself in the middle of trouble orchestrated by a crooked saloon owner who wants to take over the town and all the surrounding ranches. Naturally, Irwin comes to the aid of an old rancher and the man’s beautiful daughter, and more trouble ensues. This is a very standard plot, but Booth provides some nice action scenes and a few well-developed characters. Overall, though, his style is definitely on the bland side, and that keeps this story from having the impact it might have had otherwise. It’s not bad, and I would read Booth’s work again, but I’m not going to be on the lookout for it.

Frank C. Robertson was a long-time, very prolific Western pulpster and novelist. His short story in this issue, “Practical Woman”, is a contemporary Western set in the Fifties, a domestic drama about the marriage of a spinster schoolteacher and a hard-headed rancher. It’s well-written, as all of Robertson’s work that I’ve read is, but it’s very low-key and unexciting and really peters out in the end. Robertson was a good author, but this isn’t a very good story.

Thankfully, old reliable Walker A. Tompkins comes along next with the novelette “The Deputy’s Daughter”. In this one, a young cowboy who buys a ranch finds himself framed for murder by the local cattle baron who wants to take over his spread. His only hope is the deputy sheriff’s beautiful blond daughter, who takes a likin’ to him and believes he’s innocent. This is a fast-moving, very entertaining yarn that suffers a little from the fact that it’s not a novella or even an actual novel. I felt like it could have used some room to develop the plot and characters more, and because of that, the ending feels a little rushed. I still liked it quite a bit, though.

“Heritage of Wrath” by M.E. Bradshaw (Marjory Bradshaw) is a Mountie story about a young RCMP officer who has to arrest the father of the girl he loves for murder, which makes her break off their engagement because she refuses to believe he’s guilty. Our Mountie hero has to dig deeper into the case to find out what really happened. This is an okay tale with a somewhat disappointing ending. Bradshaw published two dozen stories during the Fifties, all of them in RANCH ROMANCES.

Stephen Payne was very prolific, turning out several hundred stories for various Western pulps and digests between 1925 and 1970, along with a handful of novels. “Killer’s Conscience” in this issue is narrated by a 14-year-old ranch kid whose father was convicted of a murder he didn’t commit and sent to prison. The narrator’s encounter with an outlaw may hold the key to clearing his father’s name. This is a solid, well-written story that I enjoyed.

There’s also an installment of a serialized novel, Philip Ketchum’s THE STALKERS, that I didn’t read. I may have the book version of that one. I’ll have to check my shelves.

I should mention, as well, that there are several excellent interior illustrations by Everett Raymond Kinstler. I don’t talk about interior illustrations much, and I probably should. Kinstler was one of the very best at those.

Overall, considering how highly I rate many of the 1950s issues of RANCH ROMANCES, this one is probably a little below average. All of the stories kept me reading, but none of them really stood out as being top-notch, either. The ones by Tompkins and Payne are easily the best of the bunch, and the one by Booth is worth reading. Maybe don’t rush to your shelves to see if you have a copy, though.

Review: Run to the Mountain - T.V. Olsen

A while back I read T.V. Olsen’s hardboiled Western novel DAY OF THE BUZZARD and enjoyed it quite a bit, so I decided to give RUN TO THE MOUNTAIN a try. To be honest, both novels are available together in a double volume that you can find on Kindle Unlimited, which is the version I read instead of the original paperback from Gold Medal shown above.

With winter closing in, drifting cowboy Bowie Candler seems to be out of luck. He’s on foot after a mountain lion kills his horse, and bad weather is threatening. But wouldn’t you know it, things just get worse for him. He finds some horses and takes one of them, but that just gets him in trouble with the vicious son of a local rancher. Bowie winds up working on the ranch, which is a hotbed of lust, ambition, and tragedy. RUN TO THE MOUNTAIN is part noir, part soap opera, and part hardboiled Western (the ranch is losing stock to rustlers, which is the most traditional Western part of the plot).

Olsen writes really well, spinning his yarn in tough, terse prose that does a particularly good job with the harsh Colorado landscape. (I think it’s Colorado; Olsen never gets specific about that, but people go to Denver.) The supporting cast is excellent, with a number of truly despicable villains and a great sidekick for Bowie.

But man, this is a dark book! Several sympathetic characters die, Bowie isn’t a very effective protagonist most of the time, and although there are a few slivers of hope here and there, the ranch is a pretty grim place. I haven’t read a lot of Olsen’s work yet, but he reminds me of Lewis B. Patten and H.A. DeRosso. I think he writes well enough that I want to read more of his books, but I may try one of his historical adventure novels next, instead of another Western.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: The English Patient (1996)

Although I tend to avoid long movies these days, occasionally I give one a try. And the same thing could be said of movies that win the Best Picture Oscar, most of which in the past couple of decades seem calculated not to be the kind of film I enjoy. But a whim led me to pick up a DVD of THE ENGLISH PATIENT at the library. I knew it was partially a war movie, so I thought why not?

I’m sure most if not all of you know the plot. In the late days of World War II, spring of 1945, four people find themselves sharing an abandoned Italian villa: a French-Canadian nurse, her dying patient, a badly burned amnesiac who was pulled out of the wreckage of a burning biplane, a former Canadian soldier who was once a thief in Montreal, and an Indian bomb disposal officer. Over the course of the nearly three-hour running time, we find out more about the histories all of them, although only the mysterious English Patient gets lengthy flashbacks to fill in all the details of how he came to be flying an ancient biplane over the North African desert, only to be shot down by German anti-aircraft fire.

If you’ve seen the movie, you already know what’s going on. If you haven’t, you should watch it to find out, because it really is a fine film, a throwback of sorts to the kind of epic love and war movies popular in the Forties, Fifties, and Sixties. I’ll just comment on a few things.

The script and direction by Anthony Minghella are great. This is a long movie, but it moved right along and I was never bored, always intrigued. There’s one scene that’s really suspenseful, too.

The movie looks beautiful. Production values are superb, and so is the musical score. Again, very old-fashioned, which is a good thing as far as I’m concerned.

The acting is top-notch all around. I never paid much attention to Kristin Scott Thomas before, but good grief, she’s gorgeous in this movie. I always like Colin Firth, too, although he doesn’t have a whole lot to do in this one. Ralph Fiennes plays the title character, and he’s excellent as always.

I could quibble a little about some of the historical aspects. I think the timeline of the war happening in the background isn’t quite right in a couple of cases. But that would be quibbling.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed THE ENGLISH PATIENT. Watching it and EL CID recently have put me in the mood to watch, or in some cases rewatch, more epic historical movies. I’ll be interested to see what I come up with.

Review: The Very Wicked - Clifton Adams

Clifton Adams is one of my favorite Western authors, and like a lot of Western writers in the Forties, Fifties, and Sixties, he also wrote hardboiled crime yarns, although not as many as some. His novel THE VERY WICKED was published by Berkley in 1960 under the name Nick Hudson, the only time he used that pseudonym as far as I know. The cover on this edition is by Charles Copeland.

In this novel, a serial killer is targeting prostitutes, and circumstances force him to go after some of their pimps, as well. There’s no mystery to it. We know the killer’s identity and his motivation fairly early on. Instead, this novel is pure suspense and characterization as we watch the killer continue his crimes while the police try to close in on him.

Adams was a great yarn-spinner who also had the knack of peopling his stories with flawed but compelling characters. All of that is on display in THE VERY WICKED. It’s one of those books that keeps you turning the pages. The fine folks at Stark House have just reprinted it in a double volume with one of Adams’ other crime novels, THE LONG VENDETTA, and this volume also includes an excellent introduction by Eric Compton about Adams and his career and a cover by Rudy Nappi. Available from Amazon in e-book and paperback editions, and highly recommended.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Fiction Weekly, June 15, 1935

I don't know who painted the cover on this issue of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY, but it's certainly eye-catching. George F. Worts, the author of the lead novel, was a fine writer, too, and always worth reading, at least in my experience. He's the biggest name in this issue, although there's an installment of a serial by Anthony Rud, certainly a prolific and popular pulpster, and one of the other authors, H.W. Guernsey, was really Howard Wandrei. Other than that, we have Edward S. Williams, whose name I at least recognize, Mary Plum, Richard S. Hobart, and Maurice Beam. They may have been fine writers, for all I know, but Worts is enough to make this issue worthwhile, especially with that striking cover.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Pete Rice Magazine, June 1934

You can't go wrong with a Walter Baumhofer cover, and this one featuring Pete Rice is pretty dramatic. I've read two Pete Rice stories, one by Ben Conlon writing as Austin Gridley in Pete's own magazine, which I thought was just okay, and the other one of his adventures in WILD WEST WEEKLY penned by Laurence Donovan under the Gridley house-name that I really liked. The story in this issue is by Conlon, and I've got to admit "Wolves of Wexford Manor" is a pretty intriguing title for a Western! I certainly wouldn't mind seeing the whole series reprinted and would be happy to buy those volumes. There are two back-up stories in this particular issue, both by Harold A. Davis, one under his name and one as by Rand Allison. I don't know much about Davis except that he ghosted some Doc Savage novels for Lester Dent, and I didn't like them very much when I read them all those years ago when the Bantam reprints were new. But maybe I should try something else by him one of these days.

UPDATE: I just realized I posted this cover before, almost seven years ago, and said almost exactly the same things about it. I'm too lazy to take it down and replace it, but I apologize for the accidental duplication.

Review: Buccaneer Blood - H. Bedford-Jones

I was in the mood to read something by one of my favorite authors, H. Bedford-Jones, and this excellent volume from Altus Press happened to be handy. BUCCANEER BLOOD collects five novelettes and novellas originally published in ARGOSY about Denis Burke, an 18th Century Irish mercenary, soldier of fortune, and pirate.

The first story, “Escape!”, appeared in the November 7, 1931 issue of ARGOSY. It’s 1703, and Denis Burke is serving in the army of French king Louis XIV along with some other Irish mercenaries. A falling out with the king and some other members of the royal court means Burke has to go on the run to save his life. His efforts to get out of France comprise the whole plot of this story, which includes plenty of swordplay, daring schemes, and banter, all of which plays out in Bedford-Jones’ usual clean, fast-moving prose. Does Burke get away? Well, there wouldn’t be any more stories in the series if he didn’t, would there?

Burke returns in “Luck of the Sea Burkes”, a novella that appeared as a two-part serial in the January 9 and January 16, 1932 issues of ARGOSY. He’s made it to the Spanish Main, along with a crew comprised mostly of Irish mercenaries who fled France with him. Once they reach the Caribbean, they become pirates, capture a Spanish ship, and are captured in turn by an evil Spanish aristocrat with a secret. Burke makes a daring escape, rescues a beautiful señorita, pulls off an audacious masquerade, and triumphs in the end, but in a way that leaves the door open for future adventures. This one is almost non-stop action, and of course, Bedford-Jones does it well.

By the time of “Spanish Gold”, a novelette from the March 19, 1932 issue of ARGOSY, Denis Burke is well established as a buccaneer, operating under the piratical alias Captain Mayo (he’s from County Mayo in Ireland, you see). When he gets a lead on a sunken Spanish ship full of treasure, he intends to retrieve it with his crew, but before the quest even gets underway, he’s kidnapped by a couple of rival pirate captains who hate him. Will Burke prove clever enough to escape them and grab the loot for himself? Bedford-Jones introduces a female pirate in this one, and she’s a great supporting character.

“Buccaneer Blood”, the title story of this collection, comes from the September 10, 1932 issue of ARGOSY. In this one, Burke’s masquerade as Captain Mayo is exposed, so he has to adopt a new identity to escape being caught and hanged by the French. In the process, he meets and falls in love with a beautiful Spanish señorita, and once again, his fate comes down to his skill with a sword as he has to battle five opponents at once.

The final story in this volume is “Spanish Blood is Proud Blood” from the March 25, 1933 issue of ARGOSY. Burke and his señorita are on their way to be married, but before they can reach their destination, a hurricane blows their ship all the way to the coast of Central America. There they find more danger, as well as more treasure. This novelette is a fitting end to this series of yarns, which form a somewhat cohesive story. Cohesive enough, anyway, that I’m a little surprised Bedford-Jones never cobbled it together into a fix-up novel.

According to the Fictionmags Index, Bedford-Jones wrote other Denis Burke stories that were published in THE POPULAR MAGAZINE before these, and more published afterward in SHORT STORIES. Not having read them, I don’t know how they’re related, nor do I know right offhand if they’ve ever been reprinted. But I do know BUCCANEER BLOOD is a fine collection, and if you’re a Bedford-Jones fan or just enjoy pirate yarns in general, I give it a high recommendation. It's available in e-book and paperback editions from Amazon.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Entrapment (1999)

I always enjoy movies with Sean Connery in them, so I’m not sure how we missed ENTRAPMENT when it came out in 1999. It’s a heist movie, with Connery playing a world-class thief and Catherine Zeta-Jones playing the insurance investigator who’s out to catch him. Through a series of plot twists, they wind up working together on a series of heists that become more complicated and dangerous as they go along. Then we get a bunch more plot twists before things wrap up in a satisfying manner.

Connery is, well, Connery, and you either enjoy that or you don’t. (I do.) Zeta-Jones is incredibly beautiful, and you either enjoy that or you don’t. (Again, I do.) Top-notch character actors Ving Rhames and Will Patton are on hand, but the movie really belongs to the two leads. There are plenty of “Sure, why not?” moments in this one, and in the end, the plot is the kind that works only if you squint your eyes and hold your mouth just right, but I found ENTRAPMENT to be a really entertaining two hours. One good thing about missing movies when they come out is that you’ve got some good stuff to watch later when you finally catch up to them.

Review: Never An Even Break - Robert Silverberg

Robert Silverberg’s softcore novel NEVER AN EVEN BREAK was published originally under the title PASSION PATSY and the Don Elliott byline in 1963 as an entry in the Midnight Reader line published by William Hamling. It’s been reprinted recently by Stark House, under what I’m guessing is Silverberg’s title for the manuscript, as part of a double volume with another softcore novel of his, STRIPPER. I read and enjoyed STRIPPER a while back and have now read NEVER AN EVEN BREAK.

The protagonist, if you can call him that, of this novel is Harry Fletcher, a mousy little accountant who has a gold-digging mistress, a bored wife, and a teenage son and daughter who are beginning to explore sex. This is a setup that’s bound to get worse, and so it does. Harry resorts to blackmail to finance his affair. His wife, already a drinker, starts hitting the booze even more and rekindles an affair with a lesbian girlfriend from far in her past. The kids get up to all sorts of things that are destined to end badly.

And boy, do they! NEVER AN EVEN BREAK is one of the bleakest novels I’ve ever read. As always with Silverberg’s work, though, it’s really well-written, and the prose just races along effortlessly to the story’s grim but inevitable conclusion.

Maybe it’s just me, but the older I get, the more I think I prefer the somewhat optimistic endings of Orrie Hitt’s softcore novels, contrived and far-fetched though they usually may be. But an occasional gut-punch like Silverberg’s books provide is worthwhile, too. The story in NEVER AN EVEN BREAK may not leave you with a smile on your face, but Silverberg’s skill as a yarn-spinner will. This latest double volume from Stark House is available in e-book and paperback editions.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Oriental Stories, Winter 1932

A classic cover by J. Allen St. John graces this issue of the legendary adventure pulp ORIENTAL STORIES. And speaking of classics, this issue contains the story "The Sowers of the Thunder" by Robert E. Howard, a poem by REH, a collaboration between Otis Adelbert Kline and E. Hoffmann Price, and stories by Warren Hastings Miller, S.B.H. Hurst, G.G. Pendarves, and the lesser known James W. Bennett, H.E.W. Gay, Grace Keon, and Lt. Edgar Gardiner. I have some reprinted issues of ORIENTAL STORIES, and of course I've read quite a few stories, by REH and others, that appeared there originally, but I don't think I've ever seen a copy of an actual issue, or of its successor, THE MAGIC CARPET. But that's okay. This whole issue is available on the Internet Archive if I ever decide to read it. I know I ought to, but there are just so many pulps and so little time . . .

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Short Stories, September 1938

J.W. Scott liked to use blondes on his Western pulp covers instead of redheads, but he teams them with the usual Stalwart, Red-Shirted Cowboy and Wounded Old Geezer, as on this issue of WESTERN SHORT STORIES. Ed Earl Repp is the author with the biggest name in this one, and he's on hand twice, once as himself and once as Brad Buckner. Other authors include the distinctively named Carmony Gove, Jack Sterrett, Rolland Lynch, Nels Leroy Jorgensen, Harold F. Cruickshank, Luke Tyler (who sounds like a house-name but apparently wasn't), and Ken Jason and John Cannon, who were house-names. I don't own this issue or any other issues of this pulp, as far as I remember, but it looks pretty good. For a lower-rung Western pulp, WESTERN SHORT STORIES ran a long time, from December 1936 to January 1957.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Elvis and Anabelle (2007)

Quirky little indie films often leave me cold, but sometimes they work and I enjoy them. ELVIS AND ANABELLE is definitely quirky. Max Minghella plays Elvis, a young man who has secretly taken over his father’s undertaking business when his dad (played by the great Joe Mantegna) suffers a brain injury that leaves him unable to work. Blake Lively is Anabelle, a local beauty queen who collapses on stage right after winning a pageant and dies. Or does she? Elvis is about to embalm her when she suddenly comes back to life on the table. A predictably oddball romance between them is the result. Although they try to keep it a secret, eventually it comes out and causes much hoopla, most of it generated by Anabelle’s mother (Mary Steenburgen) and her stepfather (Keith Carradine).

As you can see, for an indie film this movie has a pretty darned good cast, and they all do excellent jobs. The script by Will Geiger, who also directed, is humorous, poignant, heartbreaking, and heartwarming. Some pretty dark stuff is hinted at, but it never quite goes there, and the ending is more satisfying than I expected it to be.

ELVIS AND ANABELLE was filmed in Texas, mostly around Austin and in the town of Lockhart, with a few scenes on South Padre Island. As soon as I saw the courthouse square in Lockhart, I knew it had to be in Texas, although I didn’t recognize it. My father and a friend of his owned the radio station in Lockhart 50-some-odd years ago when it first went on the air. KHRB, it was called, for Heath/Reasoner Broadcasting. I spent quite a bit of time there and was even an unpaid helper around the station for a while, but I haven’t been back to Lockhart since 1972, so I’m not surprised I didn’t recognize it. But Texas courthouses have a distinctive look.

Now that I’ve digressed, let me say that ELVIS AND ANABELLE is definitely worth watching, in my opinion. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Review: The Rider From Hell - Robert Ormond Case

I’ve seen the name Robert Ormond Case many, many times on the covers of Western pulps and on their Table of Contents pages. He wrote the lead novella in the August 1934 issue of STAR WESTERN, which I featured recently in a Saturday Morning Western Pulp post. Thinking I really ought to read something by him, I checked to see if anything was available in e-book editions, and to my surprise, the very novella I’d just mentioned was not only available as an e-book reprint, I already owned it and had completely forgotten that I did.

Well, I’m not one to ignore an omen like that, so I promptly read “The Rider From Hell”, which is almost long enough to be considered an actual novel, as it’s billed in its STAR WESTERN appearance.

If I had to guess, I’d say this yarn is set somewhere around the turn of the Twentieth Century. Two adventurers from Texas, seasoned frontiersman John Thurston and his young friend Dal Givens, are captured south of the border while smuggling ammunition to Mexican revolutionaries. They’re put on trial and thrown into a Mexican prison from which no gringo has ever come out alive, let alone escaped. The commandant of the prison has an idea, though: he knows the prisoners have stashed $5000 in gold somewhere north of the Rio Grande in Texas, so he’ll set up an “escape” for one of them, who will retrieve the gold and then return to the prison to ransom his friend. Dal Givens is the one who will go, leaving John Thurston locked up in the hellhole for the time being.

Of course, things don’t work out that way. Givens never returns with the ransom, and a spy for the commandant brings back the news that the young man has rejoined the outlaw gang with which he and Thurston used to run. Filled with hate at being double-crossed and abandoned like this, Thurston vows to escape for real, track down Givens, and have his revenge on his former partner.

I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to reveal that Thurston does get away and try to carry out his plan, but since this is one of those stories where very little is what it first appears to be, Case throws in plot twist after plot twist on the way to an inevitable showdown. Do some of these twists stretch credibility just a tad too much and verge on melodrama? Well, yeah, they do. Did I care? Not at all. Case makes the reader want to believe these things are possible, and so they do.

“The Rider From Hell” reminds me very much of the work of Case’s contemporary Frederick Faust, especially the physical and psychological torment through which he puts his characters. In fact, if I hadn’t known who wrote this one, I might well have believed it’s a previously unknown Max Brand yarn. This really makes me want to read more by Case. I didn’t know anything about him, so here’s some biographical info I found on-line.

Robert Ormond Case was a well-known Oregon author and a prominent, long-time resident of Portland. He was born in Dallas, Texas in 1895 and moved to Portland as a boy. He graduated from Tualatin Academy in Forest Grove, Oregon and went on to attend the University of Oregon.

In 1917, while a sophomore at the University, Case enlisted in the U.S. Army. He served 22 months with the 65th Artillery, CAC, including 52 consecutive days at the front. Case returned to U.O. and received a B.A. in 1920. During his years at the university he was a member of the Delta Tau Delta social fraternity, Sigma Delta Chi honorary journalistic society, and Sigma Upsilon honorary fiction society. In addition he was a member of the Cross-Roads philosophical society and founder of a campus humor magazine.

After his graduation from the University of Oregon. Case went to work as a reporter for the Portland Morning Oregonian. In 1921 he served as financial editor. From 1922 to 1925 he was involved in the Oregon State Chamber of Commerce. His career as a free-lance writer began in 1926 and soon thereafter published his first western, historically-inspired stories. He is best remembered as a writer of western stories, his most well-known dating from the 1930s through the 1950s. He wrote fourteen books and over 200 novelettes. In 1944 he received a Peabody award for the radio scripts of Song of Columbia. Most of Case's serials and short stories were written for national magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post, Collier's and Country Gentleman.

Case spent most of his mature life in Portland, Oregon with periods of residency in New York and California. In Portland he was a member of the school board as well as the City Club and the Rotarians. He was a prominent member of the state Republican Party, particularly as a leader of the Conservative wing during the time of Wayne Morse. He spent the final years of his life in Oakland, California, where he died on 27 March 1964.

“The Rider From Hell” appears to be Case’s only fiction available in an e-book edition, but used copies of some of his novels are readily available and fairly inexpensive, and there are quite a few pulps containing his stories to be found on the Internet Archive. Like a lot of other Western fiction from that era, his work may not resonate with some modern readers, but I flat-out loved this story and give it a very high recommendation.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Adventures, March 1939

Pith helmet alert! I think the cover on this issue of THRILLING ADVENTURES may be by Richard Lyon, who did a lot of them for various Thrilling Group pulps in the Thirties. It's a striking cover, that's for sure. An oddity about this issue is that all the authors except one are best remembered for their Westerns: Philip Ketchum, Edward Parrish Ware, Rolland Lynch, Ben Conlon, and Harold F. Cruickshank. The one author who wasn't a prolific contributor to the Western pulps, Ray Millholland, is the only one who appears to have written a traditional Western yarn in this issue. I say "appears to" because I'm just basing that on the story titles. I don't have this issue and haven't read it. The Cruickshank story is kind of a Western, since it's an animal story and part of a series about a white wolf. I really ought to read more stories from THRILLING ADVENTURES. Most of the issues look great!

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, September 1948

This is a pulp I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, with an exciting and dramatic cover by Sam Cherry, who always delivered the goods. And I’ll have more to say about this cover later.

This issue leads off with another Tombstone and Speedy novelette by W.C. Tuttle, “The Hunches of Tombstone Jones”. In this one, our intrepid range detective duo aren’t on the trail of rustlers for a change. As a favor to their boss at the Cattlemen’s Association, they set out to investigate a case of high-grading at a gold mine. But when they arrive on the scene, they find the mine owner and his lawyer both dead. Is it murder? What does it have to do with the kidnapping of an inept young drummer from back east who sells ladies’ ready-to-wear goods? Why’s everybody so interested in a beautiful young woman and her son? Tombstone and Speedy will untangle all those threads, of course, with a lot of banter and gunplay along the way. After being a little disappointed in the last yarn I read in this series, “The Hunches of Tombstone Jones” really hits the mark. The dialogue is funny, the action is good, the detective work, mostly by Tombstone, is canny, and the plot hangs together nicely. This is a top-notch Tombstone and Speedy story.

“Catch Rope” is the third and final story in Chuck Martin’s short-lived series about crippled range detective Jim Bowen. It’s a good hardboiled Western yarn in which Bowen goes after a gang of rustlers who have kidnapped a rancher. Martin is nearly always worth reading, and this is an enjoyable story. I hoped it would bring some resolution to Jim Bowen’s continuing storyline, but it doesn’t, which is a shame.

Nels Leroy Jorgensen started out as a hardboiled crime and mystery writer in BLACK MASK before concentrating on Westerns later in his career, and I’ve enjoyed a number of his stories in the past. “Bullet Trail to Bexar”, his novelette in this issue, gets off to a promising start. It’s set in Texas in the spring of 1836, during the Texas revolution, and is about a young Texan on a mission to San Antonio. He gets saddled with a beautiful young woman along the way, and she has an agenda of her own. This should be a good story, but it’s riddled with anachronisms and blatant historical errors, as well as continuity glitches such as the young woman’s stepfather suddenly becoming her half-brother for the rest of the story. I wound up abandoning this one halfway through. It just has too many problems for it to be entertaining to me.

“Killer, Here I Come” is by Robert J. Hogan, best-known for the G-8 series, of course, but he wrote quite a few Westerns as well. This is the second story in this issue where the protagonist has a crippled leg. In this case, he’s not a range detective but rather a saddlemaker and veterinarian. He’s a very likable character, and you can’t help but root for him as he has to deal with an old enemy turned bank robber. I didn’t like this one whole-heartedly—there’s some cruelty to animals in it, and I have a hard time with that—but it’s a pretty good story overall.

Tom Parsons was a Thrilling Group house-name. The story under that by-line in this issue, “Born to Hang”, is the one illustrated by Cherry’s cover. Actually, I strongly suspect this is another case of a story being written to match an existing cover painting, because the scene lines up perfectly with the story. I also think there’s a very good chance the story was written by editor Charles S. Strong, who was also Western writer Chuck Stanley, author of a regular non-fiction column in EXCITING WESTERN. It’s a good yarn about a drifter framed for murder, and its only real drawback is that the ending isn’t as dramatic as it might have been. Still an enjoyable story, though.

Arizona Ranger Navajo Tom Raine has become one of my favorite Western pulp characters. In “Ride the Ghost Down, Ranger!”, he’s sent to find out who’s been attacking and burning out some homesteaders, which leads him to a mystery involving the inheritance of a valuable ranch. It’s a good story, and I’m convinced it’s the work of Lee Bond writing under the house-name Jackson Cole. Bond created the Navajo Tom Raine series and wrote more of the stories than anyone else, although C. William Harrison contributed quite a few, as well. This one ends with a big shootout between Raine and multiple bad guys, one of the trademarks of his stories.

The issue wraps up with “Reba Rides Alone” by D.B. Newton, one of my favorite Western authors. Of course, I can’t see that title without thinking about the country singer, but in this case, Reba is Mike Reba, a veteran outlaw who’s wounded and on the run when he encounters a young man determined to take up the owlhoot trail. This story is kind of predictable, but it’s very well written, and like all of Newton’s work, it’s worth reading.

This is a good issue overall of EXCITING WESTERN with a strong Tombstone and Speedy entry, a solid Navajo Tom Raine story, and the other stories are all okay with the exception of Jorgensen’s. If you have a copy, it’s certainly worth taking down from the shelves. If you don’t, the whole issue is also available on the Internet Archive.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Dancing Aztecs - Donald E. Westlake

I’ve read a lot of Donald E. Westlake’s novels over the years, but he was prolific enough that there are still a lot of them I haven’t read. Being in the mood to sample his work again, the one that came easiest to hand was DANCING AZTECS, a stand-alone comic thriller.

The set-up is fairly complicated. A corrupt businessman and a low-level crook are trying to smuggle into the country an ancient Aztec statue in the shape of a dancing priest. The statue is about a foot tall, made of gold, and has emeralds for eyes. It’s hidden among a shipment of copies that are intended as awards to be given out at a luncheon to the members of a club in New York City. Of course, there’s a foul-up, and the statue that’s worth a million dollars is given out in the place of one of the copies. Various people find out about this and start trying to find the valuable statue. Chaos of a humorous nature ensues, along with a considerable amount of action and romance.

What’s left to say about Westlake that hasn’t been said? You already know his style is smooth and very readable (although he does some things in this book with the timeline and POV shifts that most writers wouldn’t attempt – and makes them work). He weaves together a complex plot and a huge number of characters and somehow keeps everything straight so that it all makes sense. Not an easy task. DANCING AZTECS is very funny in places, and you can’t help but root for the characters, even the ones who are crooked. Overall, I prefer Westlake’s serious books to his comedies, but just about everything he wrote is worth reading and DANCING AZTECS is no exception. Reading it is a highly entertaining way to spend some time.

(This post first appeared in a somewhat different form on January 18, 2009, not long after Donald E. Westlake died. It was his passing that prompted me to read something by him. And it's still true there are quite a few of his books I haven't read. I probably ought to do something about that.)

Review: Men's Adventure Quarterly #14: The Bigfoot Issue! - Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, eds.

I’m no expert on Bigfoot and his cryptid cousins, by any means. I remember reading a comic strip when I was a kid where the characters encountered the Abominable Snowman, and it wasn’t played for laughs like the Bumble in RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER. In fact, it scared the crap out of me. But I don’t remember what the comic strip was. If any of you recall a comic strip featuring an Abominable Snowman storyline in the 1960-65 period, let me know!

Then there’s THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK, the Seventies docu-drama film about Arkansas’s Fouke Monster. One of my best friends had family in that area and visited often, and he swore the monster was real, although he had never seen it.

So I was ready to be educated about Bigfoot, making me part of the prime audience for the 14th issue of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY: THE BIGFOOT ISSUE! From the talented editorial due of Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, this volume leans more on non-fiction than some of the previous issues of this great publication. There are lengthy articles from well-known zoologist Ivan T. Sanderson, current cryptid expert Loren Coleman, and John W. Burns, one of the first authors to investigate the mystery that came to be known as Bigfoot. Also to be found in this issue are articles about Bigfoot’s appearances in movies, including the above-mentioned THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK, and other media. I had no idea there have been so many movies over the years featuring Bigfoot and his assorted cousins! Other articles detail Bigfoot’s several guest-starring turns on THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and THE BIONIC WOMAN, as well as the series BIGFOOT AND WILDBOY. I remember hearing about those episodes of THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and THE BIONIC WOMAN, but I don’t recall watching them back when those episodes were new and have never seen them since, so this was all new and very entertaining for me.

And of course, there’s some wild, men’s adventure magazine fiction about discovering and fighting Bigfoot-like creatures, and as always, I had a great time reading those yarns.

As for my own encounters with Bigfoot, I don’t have any. But about forty years ago, Bill Crider and I collaborated on chapters-and-outline for a men’s adventure novel involving a Yeti. Unfortunately, it never sold. Going back farther to 1969, I lived only a few miles from the nature refuge where the Lake Worth Monster, sometimes called the Goatman, had the whole area worked up for the whole summer. You can read about that here. I tend to be skeptical about such things, but you couldn’t have gotten me to go out to Greer Island that summer. No, sir. Since then, people I know have claimed the whole thing was a hoax and they know who was behind it. Could be. But I just don’t know.

To get back to MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY: THE BIGFOOT ISSUE!, this is another great issue of one of my favorite publications, and I give it a very high recommendation. You can find it on Amazon or buy it directly from the publisher.

(Apologies for rambling around a little more than usual. Seems to be the way my brain works these days.)

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Eddie the Eagle (2016)

Regular readers of this blog know that we enjoy inspirational, based-on-a-true-story sports movies around here, and 2016’s EDDIE THE EAGLE certainly fits the category, as well as being a Movie I’ve Missed Until Now. It’s the story of Eddie Edwards (played by Taron Egerton), the British ski jumper whose dream was to compete in the Olympics ever since he was a sickly little boy. A lot of things get in his way besides his own lack of talent, mostly the bureaucrats in charge of the British Olympic team and later the International Olympic Committee. Helping Eddie overcome these obstacles is his reluctant coach, a washed-up American ski jumper (Hugh Jackman) whose career never recovered from a falling out with his coach, played by Christopher Walken.

As you can see, this movie has a pretty good cast, and it’s well-made and moves right along. Evidently it’s only loosely based on what really happened, but that’s not a problem as far as I’m concerned. It’s an entertaining little film, not one of the classics of the genre, maybe, but I enjoyed it and think it’s worth watching.

Review: Pendergast: The Beginning - Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

I know a number of people who are fans of the long-running series by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child about eccentric FBI agent A.X.L. Pendergast, but I’d never read any of the books and with more than twenty entries in the series, it was another one it looked like I might never get around to trying.

But then while I was at the library I came across a large print edition of the latest novel, PENDERGAST: THE BEGINNING, which is obviously a prequel to the rest of the books. So I thought, as I often do, sure, why not?

This novel is set in the Eighties and Nineties and centers around Pendergast’s early days working in the FBI’s local field office in New Orleans, which happens to be Pendergast’s home town. He’s teamed with veteran agent Dwight Chambers, who serves as Pendergast’s mentor. He tries to, anyway. Pendergast, with his mysterious, somewhat sinister background and seeming mastery of just about everything, is not one to take a back seat to anybody.

They investigate a cold case that winds up leading them to a number of murders carried out by a serial killer who has the odd tendency of amputating his victims’ right arms. By the middle of the book, they’ve tracked down the killer and are barreling toward a showdown with him, when suddenly the whole thrust of the book shifts dramatically and what seems at first like a bizarre but relatively simple case takes on a whole new layer.

First of all, Pendergast is a great character. Not having read the rest of the series, I don’t know how much of the stuff that’s hinted at in this book is fully revealed later on, but I’m intrigued by him, that’s for sure. Preston and Child do a good job with all the characters, in fact, and their dialogue is pretty good. My only complaint about their writing is that it’s so slick and smooth it becomes a little bland at times, which is the same thing I’ve found in a lot of current thriller writers. Too many of the books sound like they could’ve been written by anybody, with nothing distinctive about the author’s voice. I don’t think Preston and Child fall victim to this sameness as much as some, but it’s there.

That wasn’t enough to keep me from enjoying this book quite a bit. I really raced through the second half to find out what was going to happen. And it’s a nice touch that the epilogue is taken from the novel RELIC, the first published book in the Pendergast series, firmly establishing the series’ continuity.

I liked this one enough I think I’m going to have to read more. Whether I’ll ever make my way through the entire series is pretty debatable, especially at my age, but you never know. If you’re already a fan, I’m sure you’ll want to read PENDERGAST. If you’re just starting the series, well, if I’m any indication, it works just fine as an introduction. It's available in e-book, hardcover, and audio editions. Recommended.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Gold Seal Detective, January 1936

I don't know if the cover painting by Rafael DeSoto on this issue of GOLD SEAL DETECTIVE was meant to illustrate the story "Rough-'Em-Up Radigan", but if it wasn't, it should have been! This is actually the first of five novelettes starring Rough-'Em-Up Radigan by Clark Aiken, who was really the great pulpster Frederick C. Davis. I've suggested before that we need a reprint volume called THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF ROUGH-'EM-UP RADIGAN, and I stand by that. Also in this issue are stories by Norman A. Daniels (once as himself and once as by David M. Norman), Paul Chadwick, Frederick C. Painton, Tom Roan, and Darrell Jordan. If you want to check out this issue, it's available on the Internet Archive. I've downloaded it myself, and I hope I get around to reading it in the relatively near future.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Star Western, August 1934

There was a brief discussion last weekend about whether the TOP-NOTCH cover I posted Sunday was painted by William F. Soare. Well, here's a STAR WESTERN cover we know was by Soare, and I like it quite a bit. Inside this issue are some fine writers, including Walt Coburn, Ray Nafziger, Cliff Farrell, and Robert E. Mahaffey. The lead story is a novella called "The Rider From Hell" by Robert Ormond Case. I love that title. Case is one of those writers whose name I've seen hundreds of times, if not more, but I don't recall ever reading anything by him. Come to find out, there's an e-book edition of "The Rider From Hell" available, and not only that, I already own the blasted thing! Maybe I'd better get around to reading it, huh? We'll see. 

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Arizona Guns - William MacLeod Raine

With some authors, you can be aware of their work for years, even decades, without ever reading any of it. That’s the way it’s been for me with William MacLeod Raine. If you’re like me and practically grew up in used bookstores during the Sixties and Seventies, you saw plenty of paperback Westerns by Raine. While he was never as popular as Zane Grey, Max Brand, or Louis L’Amour, Raine was prolific and a strong presence in the Western field for many years. Now, of course, he’s barely remembered, and based on ARIZONA GUNS, the first of his novels I’ve read, he deserves to be not only remembered but read.

Born in England in 1871, Raine moved to the American West ten years later and lived through much of the time period about which he wrote. Like Walt Coburn and another English immigrant, Fred East (who wrote as Tom West), Raine was an authentic Westerner with experience as a cowboy before he became a writer. ARIZONA GUNS was originally published in 1919 by Houghton Mifflin under the title A MAN FOUR-SQUARE. There were at least two paperback reprints under the title ARIZONA GUNS, which despite having a classic B-Western sound to it, isn’t appropriate at all. Not one bit of the novel takes place in Arizona, and the only connection is that one of the characters mentions having gone there.

Instead, nearly all the book is set in New Mexico Territory, in the fictional Washington County. If you’re sharp enough to realize that there’s a real county in New Mexico named after a famous president, you’ll have a pretty good idea where this story is going. Yep, this is another fictionalized version of the Billy the Kid saga, with the “Washington County War” taking the place of the real-life Lincoln County War. In Raine’s version, the young hero is named Jim Clanton. After growing up somewhere in the Appalachians and being involved in a feud there, Clanton goes west in search of his enemies who have fled the mountains. He winds up joining a cattle drive up the Pecos, fights outlaws and Indians, becomes friends with a cowboy named Billie Prince, meets up with his old enemies, makes new enemies, romances a couple of beautiful young women, and eventually winds up on the wrong side of the law. By this time, Clanton’s friend Billie Prince has become a lawman, making him the Pat Garrett stand-in for this story, and when Clanton is accused of murdering one of the local cattlemen, Prince has to form a posse and go after him.

Raine veers off from history in various places, so the story winds up being only loosely based on the Lincoln County War. Because of this, he’s able to throw some nice twists into the plot, especially where various romantic triangles are concerned. Romance plays a big part in this book, as was common in Westerns of the time period, especially the bestsellers authored by Zane Grey. ARIZONA GUNS reminds me quite a bit of Grey’s work, in fact, although it’s not nearly as flowery and melodramatic. Raine slips in a dark undertone to an otherwise happy ending, too, which sets it apart from Grey’s novels and the other popular Westerns of the period. The writing is a little old-fashioned in places (what else would you expect from a book written ninety years ago?), but it holds up well, the style tough and spare for the most part.

I’ve always liked Zane Grey’s plots, and when he finally got around to writing action scenes, he produced some corkers, but I also find it hard to wade through the long-winded prose in his books. If you’re the same way, I think you’d enjoy William MacLeod Raine’s novels, at least based on this one. I definitely intend to read more of them.

(This time, for a change, when I said I was going to read more by an author, I actually did. Since this post first appeared on December 12, 2008, I've read four or five more novels by William MacLeod Raine and enjoyed all of them. You can find several different e-book editions of ARIZONA GUNS/A MAN FOUR-SQUARE on Amazon for very affordable prices if you'd care to check it out.)