A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Alaska Steel - John Benteen (Ben Haas)

This is the second volume in Ben Haas’s outstanding series about soldier of fortune Neal Fargo. It opens in Hollywood in 1914, where Fargo is working temporarily as an actor, of all things, playing a villain in a silent Western movie directed by Thomas Ince. Ince is the only real-life character to make an appearance in this novel; the hero of the picture is fictional, as is a beautiful actress Fargo meets.

Ince wants Fargo to continue making movies and claims that he can be a big star, but Fargo isn’t interested in make-believe. Having lived a life of adventure, he needs the real thing. So when the actress, Jane Deering, asks him to go to Alaska and find out what happened to her husband, who disappeared there several years earlier while prospecting for gold, Fargo agrees without hesitation. He’s less enthusiastic about the idea of Jane coming along with him to look for the missing man, but she convinces him.

Naturally, things don’t go well, and Fargo and Jane wind up in all sorts of danger in the gold fields of the untamed Yukon country. There are vigilantes, a mysterious killer, blizzards, and assorted mushing around on dog sleds and snowshoes. As usual, Haas spins his yarn in tough, hardboiled prose without a wasted word to be found. He’s one of the best pure action writers I’ve ever run across. This one shows a few signs of hurried writing, but the story sweeps along at such a swift pace I didn’t really care. ALASKA STEEL is a prime example of a short, gritty adventure novel, and like all of Ben Haas’s work that I’ve ever encountered, it’s well worth reading.

(This post originally appeared on April 23, 2010. In the years since then, ALASKA STEEL has been reprinted in an e-book edition by Piccadilly Publishing, along with the other Fargo books by Ben Haas. The whole series gets a very high recommendation from me, even though I actually haven't read all of them, even at this late date. I need to get on that. Also, the copy pictured in the scan is the one I read, and I can tell from the price sticker on it that it came from the Used Book Warehouse in Rockport, Texas, which still exists but is in a different building now since its original location was heavily damaged by Hurricane Harvey. I spent a lot of very pleasant hours browsing through the place and still miss it.)

Sundance #6: The Bronco Trail - John Benteen (Ben Haas)

I recently read a couple of books that weren’t terrible, but ultimately, they were disappointing and I wished I had the time back that I spent reading them. With that bad taste in my mouth, I wanted to read something that I was absolutely certain would entertain me and make me glad that I’d read it.

Enter Ben Haas.

Over the years I’ve read most of the books in the Fargo series that Haas wrote under the name John Benteen, but there are still quite a few of his Sundance series that I never got around to. The next one I hadn’t read was #6 THE BRONCO TRAIL. This one opens with Jim Sundance, the half-British, half-Cheyenne professional fighting man, hunting down an outlaw gang in Utah and dealing with them in an explosive confrontation. When Sundance reports to the Mormon leader who hired him, he finds an old friend waiting for him: General George Crook. Sundance has worked for the army before, and now Crook wants him to find out who’s trying to stir up a new war between the Apaches and the settlers in Arizona. And while he’s at it, if he can convince Geronimo and his followers, who have fled to the mountains in Mexico, to surrender and make peace, that would be great, too.

It’s a job that puts Sundance smack-dab in the middle of danger from several different sources: the criminal ring smuggling ammunition and whiskey to the Apaches, the Mexican army, and Geronimo his own self. In addition to Geronimo and General Crook, actual historical figures who play a part in the story include scouts Al Sieber and Tom Horn. As Haas explains in an afterword, nearly everything in the book except Sundance’s involvement is based on documented history. It’s interesting and very effective.

Of course, the biggest appeal of these novels is the action, and I’m convinced that except for Robert E. Howard, nobody was ever better at writing close combat action scenes than Ben Haas. Whether it’s a brutal fistfight, a deadly battle with knives, or a close-quarters shootout, Haas’s skill at describing these scenes is breathtaking. The story races along at a breakneck pace, the settings are vividly (but not long-windedly) described, and Sundance is a great protagonist, if a bit dour.

So I went into THE BRONCO TRAIL wanting a book that I would enjoy reading, and that’s exactly what I got. Copies of the original paperback (with a cover by Mel Crair) can be found on-line, and an e-book edition is available from Piccadilly Publishing. I give this one a high recommendation.  

A Hack's Notebook - Ben Haas

 

I don’t recall the first book by Ben Haas that I read. I remember seeing Fargo and Sundance paperbacks, which he wrote under the pseudonym John Benteen, when I was in college, and I’m pretty sure I owned a copy of the movie novelization ROUGH NIGHT IN JERICHO, which he wrote under the pseudonym Richard Meade, even earlier than that, but I don’t think I ever read it. So it was probably sometime in the Eighties before I read anything by him. I know I started reading the Fargo novels then. The first one I picked up may have been VALLEY OF SKULLS, which is widely acclaimed as one of the best in the series. I know I loved it. I’ve read a bunch of novels by Ben Haas since then and enjoyed every one of them. I haven’t read them all yet, but that’s okay. That gives me something to shoot for.

Which is my long-winded way of saying that when I became aware Haas’s unfinished autobiography A HACK’S NOTEBOOK was published earlier this year, I had to grab a copy and read it right away.

I’ve been acquainted with Haas’s oldest son, the acclaimed sculptor Joel Haas, through the Internet for a number of years now. He’s provided me with some material regarding his dad’s work that I’ve published here on the blog. Joel edited A HACK’S NOTEBOOK, and the fine people at Piccadilly Publishing (who publish excellent e-book versions of many Ben Haas novels) brought it out in a very nice trade paperback edition. Ben Haas’s autobiographical manuscript comprises a little more than half the book and covers his childhood and adult life, providing a lot of details about his writing and his struggle to break in as a professional author, up to the point in the early 1960s when he’s finally starting to see some real success as a writer. It’s an intriguing, very readable mix of the personal and the professional. That’s a balance that a lot of author biographies and autobiographies fail to pull off, but not surprisingly, Haas—who could always juggle plot, character, and action beautifully in his novels—does a great job of it here, too.

Unfortunately, the manuscript ends at that point, so we don’t get to read what Haas has to say about his years of greatest success. But we do get fine reminiscinces by Joel Haas and by Ben Haas’s lifelong friend and occasional collaborator Jim Henderson, plus a selection of family photos and a complete bibliography of Ben Haas’s books. This is a really excellent volume and certainly one of the best books I’ve read this year. If you’re a fan of Ben Haas’s work or great action novels or 20^th Century genre fiction, or would just like a compelling look into the mind of a top-notch professional writer, A HACK’S NOTEBOOK gets a very high recommendation from me.

Classic Westerns: Taps at Little Big Horn - John Benteen (Ben Haas)

Although Ben Haas wrote a lot of books under a lot of different names (including some well-regarded mainstream novels under his real name), he’s probably best remembered these days as the author of two Western series from the Seventies, Fargo and Sundance, both of which he wrote under the pseudonym John Benteen. I’ve been a fan of his work for many years and have read most of the Fargo novels, but for some reason I read only a few books in the Sundance series. I intend to remedy that, starting with the fifth entry, TAPS AT LITTLE BIG HORN. (I read the first four years ago, plus another book or two from later in the series.)

Jim Sundance is the son of a Cheyenne mother and a British remittance man father. He’s a professional fighting man and is equally at home in either world, Indian or white . . . although if he had to choose, he’d probably stick with the Cheyenne. He’s a staunch defender of the Indians and uses the money he makes as a mercenary to fund efforts to combat the schemes of the Indian Ring, a notorious cartel of ruthless businessmen and corrupt politicians. This much is based on history, and actual events crop up in the novels from time to time.

TAPS AT LITTLE BIG HORN, as you’d expect, is a prime example of that. In an earlier book, Sundance met and fell in love with Barbara Colfax, the beautiful daughter of the president of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Barbara now lives with the Cheyenne and has adopted the name Two Roads Woman. But her father still wants her to come home, and he persuades Sundance to bring her to a meeting with him. The bait he dangles is a promise to use his influence to keep the army from trying to move the Cheyenne and the Sioux out of their hunting grounds in Montana.

Well, I think any reader of Westerns and men’s adventure fiction will know that things don’t work out as Sundance hoped. He winds up putting the white part of his heritage aside and throwing in with the Cheyenne as Colonel George Armstrong Custer leads the Seventh Cavalry on its fateful mission to force them out of their hunting grounds.

One of the problems with a book like this that’s so tied in with actual history is that the reader already knows a lot of what’s going to happen. The challenge to the novelist is to blend the fictional characters and events in with the real ones skillfully enough to create an interesting story that holds the attention. Ben Haas is more than up to this challenge. Sundance is a strong, likable protagonist, and even though we know things aren’t really going to work out for him in this book, we root for him anyway. And as always, Haas provides plenty of great, gritty action scenes.

Personally, I wouldn’t put TAPS AT LITTLE BIG HORN in the top rank of Ben Haas’s books, because while it’s as well-written as always and compelling enough that it kept me up later than usual reading, I’m just not as fond of books set during the Indian Wars, especially ones that focus on actual battles. It’s a good solid novel and I’m glad I read it, but I’m looking forward to some of Sundance’s more fictional adventures. Which I plan to be reading soon.

That's my copy in the scan above, by the way, complete with tape on the cover and price sticker from the Used Book Warehouse in Rockport, Texas.

Forgotten Books: The Black Bulls - John Benteen (Ben Haas)

One of the things that sets the Fargo series apart from other Western series is that author Ben Haas makes Neal Fargo a globe-trotting character. Fargo's adventures take him all over the world, from Panama to the Philippines, from Alaska to Argentina. That's where he is in THE BLACK BULLS, riding across the pampas, hanging out with gauchos, and learning how to use a bolas as he tries to recover a herd of valuable bulls used in breeding stock for bullfights.

Another thing that appeals to me about the Fargo series is that he's an expert in just about anything. In the last of these books I read, WOLF'S HEAD, he works as a lumberjack and can top trees like an old hand at the job. In THE BLACK BULLS, Haas explains that when Fargo was a young man he worked for a short time as a bullfighter's apprentice, so he's highly skilled in a bull ring, too. Having Fargo turn out to be an expert in whatever he needs to do in order to survive is a very pulpish touch and reminds me of Doc Savage. It's a testimony to Haas's skill as a writer that he makes all this utterly believable. If he says Fargo can be a toreador and survive in the ring against a killer bull, that's fine with me.

This series also reminds me a little of Ian Fleming's James Bond books. There's always a larger-than-life villain who torments Fargo before they wind up facing each other in a final showdown, even though they lack the colorful names that Fleming always tagged on his bad guys. Of course, with a larger-than-life hero, you've got to have a matching adversary for him. In this case it's German agent Wilhelm von Stahl, who is taking over ranches in Argentina to provide beef for the German army. (This book is set in 1917, right after the United States enters World War I.) Von Stahl is a Prussian dueling master, so you know he and Fargo are going to face off in a swordfight sooner or later. It's a good one, too. As is this entire book, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Fargo is one of the finest high adventure series ever written. I've said it before, but if you haven't read any of them, you really should.

UPDATE: Here's the cover for the forthcoming Picadilly Publishing reprint of this book.

Friday's Forgotten Book: The Sharpshooters -- John Benteen

THE SHARPSHOOTERS is #9 in the Fargo series by John Benteen, who was really Ben Haas, and while it happens to be the one I’ve read most recently I’m really recommending the entire series. Although they were marketed as Westerns, and some of them certainly have Western elements, like this one, they’re actually tough, gritty, globe-trotting adventure novels set around 1915, in locations ranging from the Philippines to Panama to Alaska.

Neal Fargo is a veteran of the Spanish-American War who served in Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. In fact, he carries a sawed-off shotgun presented to him by Roosevelt himself. He’s a mercenary, a gun-runner, and has fought in wars all over the world. He’s not exactly a hired killer, although he’s definitely a bad man to have for an enemy. In this book he’s caught by the Texas Rangers trying to run ammunition across the Rio Grande to Pancho Villa and blackmailed into penetrating a remote valley in the Davis Mountains of West Texas to arrest a man who shot a Ranger in the back. Problem is, the killer is part of a clan of hillbilly moonshiners who came to Texas to escape a long, bloody feud back in the Smoky Mountains. Complicating the situation are two cattle barons who want the valley for themselves and have hired gunmen to take it away from the moonshiners. In other words, Fargo finds himself surrounded by scores of hardcases who want to kill him.

As I read other books in the Fargo series, I was reminded of Robert E. Howard’s Conan, and the similarities really come through in this book. While I don’t know if the author, Ben Haas, ever read REH, my hunch is that he did. Haas even wrote three sword-and-sorcery novels, EXILE’S QUEST and THE NIGHT OF MORNING STAR as by Richard Meade and QUEST OF THE DARK LADY as by Quinn Reade. I’ve read the latter and liked it, haven’t gotten to the two Meade books yet but I will.

Haas is actually one of my favorite Western writers, though, and I highly recommend his work. He wrote the Fargo series and the even longer-running Sundance series as by John Benteen. As Richard Meade he wrote the above-mentioned sword-and-sorcery novels and a handful of really fine traditional Westerns, as well as a couple of espionage novels I haven’t read. As Thorne Douglas he wrote the five-book Rancho Diablo series, another one I haven’t gotten to yet. And he wrote several mainstream and historical novels under his own name. First and foremost, though, he was a great paperbacker, turning out numerous tough, pulpish Western action novels under the John Benteen pseudonym. A couple of the Fargo novels were written by someone using the name John W. Hardin, and the Sundance series was eventually taken over by Peter McCurtin after a few books written by various authors (Tom Curry, Dudley Dean, and Mike Linaker, that I know of) under the Jack Slade house-name. But if a book has John Benteen’s name on it, chances are that Ben Haas really wrote it and that it’s very entertaining. Haas died relatively young, but he wrote a lot of good books in a fairly short career. Take a look and see what you think.