Review: Just a Johnny Reb - Kirk Hamilton (Keith Hetherington)

Keith Hetherington was one of the best and most prolific of the Australian Western writers who turned out hundreds of books for Cleveland Publishing Company, and the fine folks at Piccadilly Publishing are doing a top-notch job of making his books available for a new generation of readers as well as for long-time fans of Hetherington’s work like myself.

One of the latest releases I read as an ARC is JUST A JOHNNY REB, which will be available August 1 as half of a double volume along with LEGACY OF THE COUGAR. It was published originally by Cleveland in 1996 under Hetherington’s most common pseudonym Kirk Hamilton. The Johnny Reb of the title is Laramie Coyle, a former Confederate soldier who would be content to leave the war behind him, but not everyone is willing to do that. A clash with a Northerner results in a gunfight that leaves a man dead and earns Coyle a mortal enemy whose efforts at revenge dog his trail.

Eventually, to repay an elderly couple who help him out, Coyle takes on the job of finding another former Confederate who was a prisoner of war in a Union prison camp. The trail leads him to San Antonio, Texas, where he runs into more trouble from the Reconstruction forces occupying the town, as well as getting mixed up with a rancher who’s determined the South will rise again, even if it means restarting the war.

As always in a Keith Hetherington novel, there’s plenty of well-written action. He was one of the best at fistfights and shootouts, giving them a suitably gritty and realistic feel. The plot is solid, and Laramie Coyle is a good protagonist. The little bit of romance that crops up in the novel is handled well, too.

I enjoyed JUST A JOHNNY REB, and if you’re a fan of traditional Westerns, I think there’s a good chance you will, too. You can pre-order it at Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Bookshop.org.

Forgotten Books: Bannerman The Enforcer - Kirk Hamilton (Keith Hetherington)

Under various pseudonyms, Keith Hetherington was one of the most prolific authors of Westerns published in Australia by Cleveland Publications. One of his most common pen-names was Kirk Hamilton, and under that name he wrote a 48-book series called Bannerman the Enforcer, all of which have been reprinted in e-book editions by Piccadilly Publishing. I’ve read several stand-alone Westerns by Hetherington that I enjoyed quite a bit, so I recently read the first of the Bannerman books, titled simply THE ENFORCER.

As the book opens, Yancey Bannerman is a cowboy and trail boss who has just taken a herd to Mexico and is on his way back to Texas. He runs into some trouble along the way from bandidos who want to steal the money he got for the herd, but with some help from a gunsmith and sharpshooter named Johnny Cato, he makes it back to Texas. Cato, having wrapped up a dangerous errand of his own that took him below the border, tags along.

We quickly learn that Yancey is the younger, black sheep son of wealthy businessman Curtis Bannerman. Yancey’s older brother Charles is actually the black sheep of the family, though, having run up gambling debts and gotten in trouble with local criminals in San Francisco. In an effort to escape from this dilemma, Charles persuades his father to send him to Texas on business, and if you think the Bannerman brothers are going to run into each other and Yancey is going to be drawn into Chuck’s troubles (which wind up involving a conspiracy that stretches all the way from San Francisco to Austin), you’d be absolutely right.

Yancy also meets the governor of Texas, Lester Dukes, who is a reformer out to bring law and order to the Lone Star State. With continued assistance from Johnny Cato, Yancey helps both his brother and the governor and wraps up the various plotlines in a very satisfactory fashion, although not without quite a few fistfights and gunfights along the way, of course.

Yancey and Cato are quite likable protagonists, and Hetherington’s smooth prose and skillful pacing making THE ENFORCER a real pleasure to read. By the end of the novel (and this isn’t really a spoiler, since it’s the whole concept of the series) our two heroes have gone to work for Governor Dukes as special troubleshooters, authorized to go anywhere in Texas to root out corruption and corral owlhoots. I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to reading all 48 books in the series, but I definitely plan to read more. I had a fine time reading this book, and if you enjoy traditional Westerns, there’s a good chance you will, too.

Forgotten Books: Walk Out of Hell - Brett Waring (Keith Hetherington)

Brett Waring is really Keith Hetherington, one of the most prolific writers of all time who has authored hundreds of books under several pseudonyms, mostly (but not all) Westerns and whose wordage total probably approaches 40 million. He’s also a very entertaining author, as WALK OUT OF HELL proves. This novel was published originally in Australia by Cleveland and reprinted by them in the past year or so, the edition I read.

This sounded to me like a good tough yarn, and I wasn’t disappointed. Frank Cain, wounded and battered, stumbles out of the Wildfire Mountains as the only survivor of a prospecting expedition that set out to find the Lost Spanish Mine. According to Cain, an avalanche wiped out the rest of his party, but certain things about his story don’t add up, and the situation becomes even more suspicious when the local lawman uncovers the fact that Cain spent time in prison for killing a previous prospecting partner of his—and originally claiming that an avalanche was responsible for that death, too.

Most people don’t believe Cain’s story, including his girlfriend Meg McGill, whose father was the leader of the expedition that disappeared in the Wildfires. Several local hardcases think that Cain knows where the lost mine is located and kidnap him to torture the information out of him. He gets away but is forced by the sheriff to go back into the mountains so that the lawman can get to the truth. Meg goes along as well, determined to find out what really happened to her father. And those gold-greedy outlaws are on the trail, too . . .

One of the best things about WALK OUT OF HELL is its noirish element. The reader doesn’t know until the end whether Frank Cain is hero or villain. There’s a lot of tough action along the way, and Hetherington, old pro that he is, knows how to keep a story moving at a very fast pace. His work is always worth reading, and I enjoyed this one a lot. If you’re looking for a good hardboiled Western, WALK OUT OF HELL is very much worth reading.