Here are ten more Western authors whose work I really enjoy,
although, as usual, some of them can be inconsistent.
Peter Dawson – In real life Peter Dawson was Jonathan
Glidden, brother of Frederick Glidden, who wrote as Luke Short. I believe Jon
began writing after Fred did, but both were prolific contributors to the pulps
during the Thirties. If I recall correctly (and someone please correct me if I
don't), Jon Glidden won some sort of contest with his novel THE CRIMSON
HORSESHOE, which was serialized in WESTERN STORY and then published in hardback
by Dodd, Mead, starting him on a very successful career as a novelist. He continued
to write for the pulps through the Forties but concentrated on novels after
that. The paperback reprints from Bantam Books were so popular that after
Glidden's death Bantam hired another author to write paperback originals under
the Dawson name. I've never read any of them, but I've been told they're not nearly
as good as the ones Glidden wrote. I first discovered Peter Dawson's work by
reading the novel TRAIL BOSS when I was in the seventh grade, and I've read
many of his books since then. Several volumes of his pulp work were published
in paperback by Leisure in recent years.
Peter Field – This is a bit of a cheat, since "Peter
Field" is a house-name and a number of different authors used it. But when
I was a kid checking out books from the bookmobile every week, I went through
every Peter Field western they had, which was quite a few. The books were
published in hardback, first by William Morrow (more on that in a minute) and
then by Jefferson House. All the ones I read back then were in the Powder Valley series and featured the adventures
of Pat Stevens, a horse rancher in Colorado, and his sidekicks: short,
roly-poly Sam and tall, gaunt, eyepatch-wearing Ezra. I had no clue then that
Peter Field wasn't the author's real name, but I know now that all of the
novels from the Fifties and Sixties were written by Lucien W. Emerson. Later on
I discovered the earlier books in the series, written at first by William
Thayer Hobson, the president of William Morrow and the husband of bestselling
novelist Laura Z. Hobson, and then later by various hands, most notably Davis
Dresser, a.k.a. Brett Halliday his own self. Dresser was the primary author of
the series during the Forties, when his Mike Shayne series was also going strong.
In these earlier books, Pat Stevens was still a rancher, but he was also the
sheriff, and he had a wife, too, who had disappeared by the time I started
reading the books in the early Sixties. In addition to all this, the Peter
Field name was also used on several stand-alone Western novels, all of which
were written, I believe, by Harry Sinclair Drago.
Peter Germano – Best known under his pseudonym Barry Cord,
Germano wrote under that name and several others. His stories began appearing
in the Western pulps in the mid-Thirties, and by the late Forties he was
writing novels under the Barry Cord name. During the Fifties he was one of the
main authors of Jim Hatfield novels for the pulp TEXAS RANGERS under the
house-name Jackson Cole, and some of his entries are among the best in the
entire series. Later on he became a prolific author of paperbacks, turning out
many novels for the Ace Double line as well as other publishers. Some of these
novels were rewritten and expanded version of stories he originally wrote as
Jim Hatfield novels. As is the case with most of the Western authors I like,
his style was terse and hardboiled, and his stories are well-plotted with
plenty of action.
William Hopson – Another author who started in the pulps and
then became a prolific paperbacker, Hopson has an odd style that takes a little
getting used to, but once a reader is accustomed to it, his prose is very
effective. His work is inconsistent. His Masked Rider "Guns of the
Clan" is almost unreadable, while his later stand-alone novel GUNFIGHTER'S
PAY is an excellent yarn with one of the best action climaxes I've found in a
Western. If you try something by him and don't like it, it's probably
worthwhile to try something else.
Peter McCurtin – One of the great mysteries in Western
publishing, Peter McCurtin was long thought to be a house-name, but it appears
there really was a writer and editor by that name who worked primarily for
Belmont/Tower/Leisure. His best work is probably the Carmody series, published
under his own name. These are tough, gritty action Westerns and very
well-written. All of them except the first book in the series are in first
person, something of a rarity in Westerns. Later, McCurtin wrote another series
under the name Gene Curry about a character named Saddler, who is basically
Carmody again. He also wrote some of the Lassiter novels under the house-name
Jack Slade, including THE MAN FROM DEL RIO, the first Adult Western I ever read
and a real eye-opener at the time. McCurtin continued the Sundance series after
Ben Haas's death, and while I don't like his entries as much as the earlier
books, they're solid Westerns. He also wrote men's adventure novels and a
couple of hardboiled private eye novels that are well-regarded by some fans of
the genre. I haven't gotten around to reading them yet, but I will one of these
days.
Leonard F. Meares – I first encountered the work of Len
Meares in the Bantam paperbacks published under the name Marshall McCoy. These
were thin Westerns in two series: Larry and Streak, and Nevada Jim. I enjoyed these
books and read them all. Checking the copyright pages, as I did even then, I
figured out that these were reprints of books originally published in
Australia. I never dreamed, though, that many years later I would be good
friends by correspondence with the author, whose name was really Marshall McCoy
but rather Leonard F. Meares. Beginning in the mid-Fifties, he wrote more than
800 novels, most of them Westerns and primarily under the pseudonym Marshall
Grover, although he used other pen-names as well. I read dozens of them and
always enjoyed them. Fast-moving, well-plotted, with very appealing characters.
About half of his output consisted of the Larry and Stretch series (the
characters' names were changed slightly in the American editions, for some
reason), a couple of drifting Texans with a habit of getting into trouble.
Toward the end of his life, Len's Australian publishers cancelled the series,
but since they had a contract for foreign rights in the Scandinavian countries,
they insisted that he continue writing the books so that they could be
translated. I know it bothered him to write these books knowing they would
never appear in English. But still he carried on, still with as much enthusiasm
as he could muster for the work. He was a great friend, and to this day I miss
hearing from him.
D.B. Newton – Another veteran of the pulps, D.B. Newton
wrote some of the Jim Hatfield novels in TEXAS RANGERS, as well as entries in
the Rio Kid and Masked Rider series. Branching out into paperback novels, he
wrote RANGE BOSS, the book regarded as the first modern-day mass-market
paperback original. For Berkley he wrote a series about Jim Bannister, unjustly
accused of being an outlaw and forced to go on the dodge. As Dwight Bennett, he
wrote a number of excellent stand-alone Western novels for Doubleday's Double D
line. Finally, he created and wrote several novels in the Stagecoach Station
series for Lyle Kenyon Engel's Book Creations Inc. These were published by Bantam
under the house-name Hank Mitchum. Engel intended for Newton to write all the
books in the series, but with them coming out every two months, he couldn't
keep up that pace and BCI enlisted other authors to contribute novels as Hank
Mitchum, eventually including me. I've always taken great pleasure in the fact
that I wrote shared a house-name with someone who wrote Jim Hatfield novels,
since TEXAS RANGERS is one of my all-time favorite pulps. Newton's novels are
good solid Westerns, nothing flashy about them. Maybe not quite as hardboiled
as some of my other favorites, but still excellent reading.
Dudley Dean McGaughey – Best known for his books under the
names Dean Owen and Dudley Dean, McGaughey also wrote under house-names and
other pseudonyms, including, you guessed it, some Jim Hatfield novels. His
Hatfield novel "White Gold of Texas", one of the stories reprinted in
paperback by Popular Library, is one of the best in the series. McGaughey also
wrote mysteries and soft-core erotic novels and movie novelizations and TV
tie-in novels. Tough prose and good plots are to be found in all his work. He was
the sort of versatile, top-notch paperback author I've always enjoyed and
admired.
Walker A. Tompkins – Another veteran of TEXAS RANGERS and the
Jim Hatfield series, Tompkins wrote many of those novels as Jackson Cole
throughout the Forties and Fifties, and they're all good. He wrote lead novels for
the other three Western hero pulps published by Ned Pines, RIO KID WESTERN,
MASKED RIDER WESTERN, and RANGE RIDERS WESTERN, along with scores of
stand-alone stories for nearly every Western pulp in existence. He was a
stalwart in WILD WEST WEEKLY during the Thirties, writing under several
different names, and some of that work comes in for some criticism in Bill
Pronzini's SIX-GUN IN CHEEK. Admittedly, a lot of Tompkins' early stories and
novels are pretty over-the-top. But by the late Forties he had matured into the
author of a number of fine stand-alone Western novels, some of them expanded
from stories that originally appeared in the pulps.
Harry Whittington – Justly famous for his hardboiled mystery
and suspense novels, Harry Whittington's Westerns are just as dark and lean as
his crime yarns. His novel TROUBLE RIDES TALL was adapted into the TV series LAWMAN
starring John Russell and Peter Brown. SADDLE THE STORM, the story of a
frontier town celebrating the Fourth of July, is probably his best Western, as
the festivities bring one dark secret after another into the open. Any of
Whittington's Westerns, whether from Gold Medal, Ace, or Ballantine, is well
worth reading.
I see this installment is even more long-winded than the
previous one. The usual caveats apply. If you try books by all these authors,
there'll be some you don't like. But I'll bet there'll be some you will.
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