Review: Chainlink - Owen Evens (Dudley Dean McGaughey)

A friend of mine recommended this Western novel, so I hunted up a copy and read it. The author, Owen Evens, was actually Dudley Dean McGaughey, one of my favorite hardboiled Western writers, best known under his pseudonym Dean Owen. He also wrote as Dudley Dean, Owen Dudley, Dean McCoy, and Hodge Evens. As far as I know, CHAINLINK is the only novel on which he used the name Owen Evens. It was published as a paperback original by Ballantine in 1957 with a good cover by Mel Crair.

Purely coincidentally, this is the second novel I’ve read this month in which a ranch is named Chainlink. The other was in T.V. Olsen’s RUN TO THE MOUNTAIN. And like the Olsen novel, this CHAINLINK is pretty bleak and grim. In the days following the Civil War, former Union officer Griff Jordan returns to the Big Bend in Texas as the partner of former Confederate Major Milo Clay, who has just bought the Chainlink ranch.

Chainlink formerly belonged to brother and sister Clyde and Lisa Benbow. Clyde has vowed to reclaim the ranch, no matter what it takes, and he’s willing to kill to accomplish that goal. Making him an even more despicable villain, he has feelings for Lisa that are anything but brotherly. Also complicating matters is Major Clay’s niece Maydelle, who’s become the madam of the local whorehouse after being seduced by Clyde Benbow when she was sixteen. And no one in the area knows that Griff fought for the Union despite being a Texan, a secret that would cause plenty of trouble if it ever came out.

It’s a set-up that’s ripe for violence, angst, lust, and tragedy, and McGaughey provides plenty of all of those as Clyde Benbow sets out to take over Chainlink again. But Griff is plenty tough and fast on the draw, so he’s well-matched in this clash with the brutal Benbow and his minions. There’s plenty of gritty action, and as in Roe Richmond’s MONTANA BAD MAN, which I wrote about last week, the sexual elements are surprisingly graphic for a paperback Western published in 1957.

McGaughey was an excellent writer, able to spin a yarn with a relentless pace and interesting, if not always likable, characters. CHAINLINK is a fine example of his work. There was a large print edition in 2001, but other than that it hasn’t been reprinted. Reasonably priced copies of both editions can be found on-line. If you’re a fan of hardboiled Westerns, I recommend it and any of the other books by McGaughey, under all his pseudonyms.

Blue Mascara Tears - James McKimmey

The original 1965 Ballantine edition of James McKimmey’s novel BLUE MASCARA TEARS sports one of my favorite Ron Lesser covers (see below). If I’d seen this on a spinner rack back then, I would have had to buy it. As it is, I just read the new Stark House reprint of the book, in a double volume with 24 HOURS TO KILL, which I reviewed a couple of weeks ago. So this is my second McKimmey novel, but it certainly won’t be my last.

BLUE MASCARA TEARS is a hardboiled cop novel centering around Inspector Jack Cummings, who works in a big city that I think is probably San Francisco, although McKimmey doesn’t ever specify that. Cummings is investigating two cases, the murder of a gambler who was gunned down in his hotel room by an intruder who stole a wad of money from him and the rape of a neighborhood teenage girl. At the same time, he’s carrying out a vendetta of sorts against gangster Knocko Cutter, whom Cummings blames for the gambler’s murder even though he has an alibi. Knocko is protected by higher-ups in the police department, so Cummings has to battle that corruption, too, as he tries to get to the bottom of the two cases.

This book races along until about two-thirds of the way through when it suddenly appears that Cummings has solved everything. Ah, but then there’s a suspicious suicide that Cummings believes is murder, and in a way the whole thing starts again. The suspense ratchets up more and more until McKimmey really had me turning to the pages to get to the very emotional ending.

BLUE MASCARA TEARS is an excellent novel with a complicated protagonist. Is Cummings right about Knocko Cutter’s involvement with the crimes, or is he too obsessed with getting the gangster and letting that cloud his judgment? Is he so afraid of the corruption rubbing off on him that he sees it where there isn’t any? These questions lurk in the back of the reader’s mind, and even Cummings sometimes questions his own objectivity. This is a pretty philosophical book for a hardboiled crime novel, but McKimmey never lets it bog down with navel-gazing. It stays tough and fast all the way through. I give it a high recommendation, especially since you can get it in that double volume with an equally compelling yarn, 24 HOURS TO KILL.