The Nightmare Riders - Lynn Westland (Archie Joscelyn)

The very prolific Archie Joscelyn’s best-known pseudonym was Al Cody, but he wrote quite a few Western novels under the name Lynn Westland, too. THE NIGHTMARE RIDERS is an early Westland novel, published by lending library publisher Phoenix Press in 1940. My copy doesn't have a dust jacket, but I found the above image on-line.

This novel makes use of the old amnesia plot. I used it myself in one of my Longarms, I recall. In THE NIGHTMARE RIDERS, a drifting cowpoke who can’t remember who he is comes across a bushwhacked old-timer who recognizes him and calls him by the name Jody Johnson. But who is Jody Johnson? The old-timer dies before he can reveal that. Jody decides he might as well use that name, even though it means nothing to him, and soon discovers that the murdered man owned a ranch and had a beautiful granddaughter. The local saloon owner/cattle baron has his eyes on the ranch and also on a gold mine located on the spread, even though the diggings have never paid off. Jody hangs around to help the granddaughter, of course, and maybe find out more about who he really is.

That doesn’t take long, because he soon sees the deputy in town tacking up a reward poster stating that Jody Johnson is wanted for murder.

Well, we’re off on a whirlwind of action after that, as Jody foils the villain’s schemes and gradually uncovers the truth of his own identity. Joscelyn’s prose, especially at this stage of his career, runs toward the melodramatic, but a little purple prose never bothered me much. There are some excellent, highly suspenseful scenes late in the book that take place in the mine’s underground tunnels. I’m a little claustrophobic to start with, and this section was genuinely creepy to me. The ending’s not quite as dramatic as it could have been, but it still worked okay.

THE NIGHTMARE RIDERS reminded me of a 1930s B-Western movie, maybe not top tier Republic Pictures stuff, but better than, say, Monogram or PRC. It’s not one of Archie Joscelyn’s best novels but I still had a fine time reading it.

Forgotten Books: Legion of the Lawless - Lynn Westland (Archie Joscelyn)

Archie Joscelyn’s writing career lasted for more than fifty years, starting in the pulps in 1921 and continuing until the late Seventies. He wrote hundreds of stories, mostly for the Western pulps, but he’s best remembered for the Western novels (at least two hundred of them) he wrote under his name and the pseudonyms Al Cody, Lynn Westland, and Tex Holt.

I’ve read a number of Joscelyn’s novels and have found him to be a consistently entertaining author of traditional Westerns, with his books ranging from good to excellent, other than the novels from very late in his career, which are not good. Recently, I read his Lynn Westland novel LEGION OF THE LAWLESS, published by Harlequin in 1953, back when Harlequin published other genres besides romances. That’s my copy in the scan.

This novel takes place soon after the Civil War and concerns the Army’s effort to control the bands of former guerrillas who have turned outlaw and are preying on the cattle drives that have started up the trails from Texas to the railhead in Missouri. Captain Phil Lansing is in command of the cavalrymen sent to track down the mysterious leader of the renegades known as Texas Red. Lansing and his men encounter a cattle drive up from the San Saba country in Texas, being led by a beautiful young woman named Joan Ellis. Lansing falls for her, of course, never realizing that her brother is actually the infamous Texas Red, who has promised the herd safe passage through the region controlled by the renegades.

With some writers, that would be enough plot for a book right there, but Joscelyn often has some oddball twist in his tales, and that’s true here. Stalwart cavalry officer Phil Lansing is the nominal protagonist of the book, but it’s none other than Texas Red Ellis, the notorious outlaw his own self, who turns out to be the hero. Like an owlhoot GAME OF THRONES, there are others vying for power among the renegades, plus the threat of Indians, so Joscelyn has plenty going on as the action stampedes toward an epic showdown in an Indian burial ground. (Yes, there is an actual stampede. Of course there is.)

LEGION OF THE LAWLESS isn’t in the top rank of the Joscelyn books I’ve read (DOOMROCK and THE THUNDERING HILLS are the best I’ve encountered so far), but it’s a good solid traditional Western with just enough interesting angles to set it apart. Joscelyn is one of those writers whose prose can range from slightly awkward to vivid and poetic, sometimes on the same page. If he’d been a little more consistent in his writing, I think he would be better remembered than he is. I enjoyed this book and I’m glad I have probably two dozen more of Archie Joscelyn’s novels on my shelves. If you’re a fan of traditional Westerns, he’s worth reading.