Rough Edges

First of all, check out the upper right corner of this cover: “A Whipcrack Western”. That’s right, this is the first book in a brand-new imp...

Val Penmark, a crusty old rancher out for vengeance, and Jason Drum, a young cowboy who wants to recover the money his family depends on, ar...

It takes me a long time to read a book these days, a combination of being really busy, not having much time to read, and a rather scattersho...

Some critics have said that David Goodis’s novels read like book-length suicide notes. That’s certainly an apt description of THE WOUNDED AN...

A.S. Fleischman doesn’t waste any time dropping the reader right into the middle of the action in this novel, published originally by Gold M...

John McPartland died young and wasn’t very prolific, only a dozen novels during the Fifties, a couple of them published posthumously. But hi...

The protagonist of this novel, Chase Iverton, has chosen a tough path for himself. Following the Civil War, Chase, a Texan who fought for th...

I first encountered the work of Wenzell Brown in THE SAINT MAGAZINE in the Sixties, where he published a few espionage novellas about a secr...

As far as I know, this is the author’s only crime novel, although he wrote a few other novels about the advertising business. Jack Dillon wa...

HOME IS THE SAILOR is perhaps the quintessential Gold Medal novel. It has all the elements: the tough, somewhat dim hero who stays drunk for...

Texas rancher Cole Mowbrey arrives in Montana on the trail of Matt Kerrigan, who ran off with Cole's sister and then abandoned her to di...

Having read and enjoyed IT RHYMES WITH LUST , I decided to try this other early graphic novel with a crime plot, MANSION OF EVIL, published ...

Art by Lu Kimmel The year is 1851, and Texas Ranger Dave Fleming is gripped by gold fever. He resigns from the Rangers and heads for Panama,...

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on January 23, 2009. I failed to mention in it that the cover is by the great Ba...

THE IRISH BEAUTY CONTRACT is the fifth novel in Philip Atlee’s Joe Gall series of espionage adventures, or the sixth if you count PAGODA, an...

Brett Mackey, foreman of one of the largest ranches in the Big Bend, returns home after a cattle drive to find the area on the brink of a ra...

The girl of the title in this book is Lucinda Perky, a beautiful young blonde who lives at a fishing camp on Lake Okeechobee in Florida that...

I’ve read and enjoyed many books by Gil Brewer over the years, but for some reason, two of his earliest and most successful novels have sat ...

The latest Black Gat Books reprint, TAKE ME AS I AM, was published originally by Gold Medal in 1952, so you know with that pedigree it’s alm...

Leslie Ernenwein was a prolific contributor to the Western pulps from the late Thirties to the end of the pulp era. He also wrote several do...