Wayne D. Dundee RIP

I'm having a hard time processing the fact that Wayne Dundee has passed away. I knew his health was bad and so I'm not really surprised by the news, but at the same time, the idea of the world without that big galoot in it just seems so wrong. It seemed like Wayne would just always be around. Like Bill Crider, Ed Gorman, Bob Randisi, and Steve Mertz before him, Wayne was a great friend for more than 40 years. He went from being a fine author of private detective novels (seriously, if you're a fan of the genre, you need to read all of his Joe Hannibal novels) to being one of the best Western writers in the business. Early on, he was the editor and publisher of an excellent small press magazine called HARDBOILED; many of us who broke in during the Seventies and Eighties published in its pages and were proud and honored to be there. Years later, I was privileged to edit a number of his novels and always loved working with him. He could flat-out write and was a terrific storyteller. I was never fortunate enough to meet him in person, but we spoke on the phone several times and traded countless emails. He managed to be both a gentle giant and a genuine tough guy. Mostly he was my friend, and I'm going to miss him. As I told a mutual friend this morning, the circle just keeps getting smaller and smaller.

Repost and RIP: The Sleazy Side of the Street - Guest Blog by Brian Ritt

I just saw on Facebook that Brian Ritt has passed away. This comes as a real surprise. I knew Brian had been battling health problems for years, but we'd been in touch in recent months and I knew he was planning to return to teaching and had publishing plans as well, perhaps for a new edition of his great reference book PAPERBACK CONFIDENTIAL and maybe even finishing a crime novel of his own he'd been working on for a while. He was a friendly, enthusiastic guy who wrote several guest posts for this blog, including the one linked to below. I've always thought that it played a major part in the revival of interest in the work of Orrie Hitt. Rest in peace, Brian. 

Rough Edges: The Sleazy Side of the Street - Guest Blog by Brian Ritt: (Thanks to Brian Ritt for a fine examination of the life and work of Orrie Hitt.)

William G. Contento, R.I.P.

I've seen several mentions on Facebook that William G. Contento has passed away. If you don't recognize the name, Bill Contento was one of the editors of the Fictionmags Index, along with Phil Stephensen-Payne, and also produced or assisted in the production of many other bibliographic resources. The Fictionmags Index is an absolutely vital website for me and the one I've almost certainly visited more than any other during my time on the Internet. The information and cover scans available there have contributed immensely to this blog, the WesternPulps email group, and my pulp education in general. The FMI is always open on my computer, and I'm there checking out something at least once a day, often multiple times. I had only limited contact with Bill Contento, but the emails we traded were always pleasant, and I'm glad I got the chance to tell him how much I appreciate his efforts. Rest in peace.

Ed

Those of us who are friends with Ed Gorman knew this day was coming, but that doesn't make the news of his passing any easier to take. I've had many wonderful friends in the writing business over the years, but only a handful I can say are truly like family to me, and Ed was one of those.

Ed was a wonderful writer, of course. Anybody who's read his work knows that. But he was an even better man and friend. It's not too much of a stretch to say that if not for Ed Gorman, there's a good chance I wouldn't even be a writer anymore. Time and again over the years, when I was having trouble selling and was ready to throw my hands in the air and quit, I'd get a phone call from Ed and he'd say, "James, I know this guy who needs somebody to write a series, and I just told him to call you," or "James, I know this guy who needs somebody to ghost a book real quick, and I just told him you're the man for the job."

On two occasions, it was Ed himself who needed a book written in a hurry. He'd sold some Westerns to Zebra but didn't have time to write them. He sent me an outline for a book called THE MAN FROM NIGHTSHADE VALLEY and told me to make it as much like a Max Brand novel as I could. That was no problem, since I'd been a Max Brand fan since I was ten years old, but I quickly read several Brand novels anyway to get in the mood and launched into the writing. The book turned out to be one of my favorites. Zebra published it under the name Jake Foster, with a pretty good cover and the title changed to HELL-FOR-LEATHER RIDER. Since the book's protagonist was a Pony Express rider, that sort of fit, although not as well as Ed's original title.

The other book I wrote for Ed was very different, a noirish Old West novel about a man unjustly blamed for a bank robbery returning to the town where the crime took place. Ed's title was THE PRODIGAL GUN. Zebra published that one, again as Jake Foster, under the less appropriate title RAMROD REVENGE. Many years later, when I republished these books under both of our names, I restored Ed's original titles to them.

I'm trying to remember when Ed and I first met. It was around 1985, I know that, and I believe it was Bob Randisi who put us in touch. Ed sent me a couple of his horror novels that Zebra had published under the name Daniel Ransom. I loved them: fast-paced yarns, funny in places, and genuinely creepy. I'm not sure Ed was that fond of these books in later years, but I still have a soft spot in my heart for them because they introduced me to his distinctive voice. His horror novel THE FORSAKEN (published by St. Martin's, I believe) has passages in it so poignant that they still get me a little misty-eyed when I think about them decades later.

But Ed was one of those guys who could write just about anything. His mystery novels and stand-alone thrillers were all top-notch. He could do excellent house-name books, although he preferred working on his own stuff, and who can blame him for that. But for my money, his best novels are his Westerns. Intricately plotted, tinged with melancholy, full of painfully sharp observations about the human condition . . . We might as well just go ahead and say that Ed Gorman was the best author of Western noir of all time.

When I said above that Ed and I "met" in 1985, I mean through correspondence, of course. Ed wasn't a guy who got around a lot. He liked being at home, and he didn't like crowds. We traded emails and letters for thirty years, though, and in the pre-Internet days we talked for hours on the phone. I'm one of the lucky folks who met him in person, at the WWA convention in Jackson, Wyoming, in 1992. Our visit was a short one, but I treasure the memory of it.

Forgive the somewhat scattered nature of this post. All sorts of memories are bouncing around in my head today. Ed never ended an email without expressing how much Livia and I meant to him. The feeling is mutual, my friend. We'll miss you forever. Rest in peace, Ed, and our deepest condolences to Carol and the rest of the family.

Stan Lynde, R.I.P.

Most of you probably know what a huge fan I am of writer/artist Stan Lynde and his long-running comic strip RICK O'SHAY. I'm very sorry to report that Stan has passed away from cancer at the age of 81. His obituary in the Washington Post can be found here. I'm glad I got to know him and had a chance to tell him how much his work meant to me. Somewhere Hipshot Percussion is looking up at a snow-capped mountain and telling his ol' pard so long.

Dave Brubeck, RIP

One of my all-time favorite songs, and many of his others are almost as good. I don't know if I was the only first-grader in our little Texas town listening to "Take Five" when it came out, but there couldn't have been many of us. Rest in peace, Mr. Brubeck. Your music meant an awful lot to so many of us.

Charles E. Fritch, RIP

I heard the sad news today that writer and editor Charles E. Fritch passed away back in October. His obituary is here. Chuck was the assistant editor at MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE when Sam Merwin Jr. was the editor and I assume during Larry Shaw's one or two issue tenure as editor as well, then took over the magazine and ran it for the remaining four or five years of its existence. He was the editor who asked me to write all the Mike Shayne stories, which I did for about two and a half years. That was my first regular writing job, and coming up with that 20,000 words month in and month out was great training for me. Chuck was a movie lover and had an oddball sense of humor, and both of those things showed up in his editing of MSMM. He was also a fine writer himself in the mystery and science fiction fields, although he was never very prolific. After the magazine folded we were out of touch for quite a while, but in recent years we traded the occasional emails. He was a good man and a top-notch pro, and I'm sorry he's gone. Rest in peace, Chuck.

James Arness, R.I.P.

One of my all-time favorites is gone.  When I wrote about his series THE MACAHANS and HOW THE WEST WAS WON a few weeks ago, it didn't even occur to me that he might not be around much longer. James Arness just always seemed indestructible to me.  Rest in peace.

Frank Frazetta, RIP

Word is getting around that Frank Frazetta passed away earlier today from a stroke. A lot of people will be posting about him, I'm sure, including some who knew him. I didn't, but over the years I've bought a lot of books with covers by him, including this one, which had quite an impact on my life because it introduced me to the work of Robert E. Howard. It was the Frazetta cover that caught my eye first, though, that day in Barber's Bookstore in downtown Fort Worth. A great artist who will be missed.

Robert B. Parker, R.I.P.

Plenty of people will be commenting on Parker's passing, and I'm no different. I'm one of those who sort-of, kind-of quit reading him, but only a year or so back, so I've read most of his books. I enjoyed all of those I read and think I probably laughed out loud at least once in reading each one of them. I discovered Parker's work when the first paperback edition of THE GODWULF MANUSCRIPT came out. I was working in the book department of a department store in downtown Fort Worth, and we carried it. I was already a big fan of Hammett, Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and many other private eye writers, and when I read THE GODWULF MANUSCRIPT, I knew it was the real stuff. I think we're only beginning to appreciate just what a huge influence Parker's work was on the genre.

There are some stand-alone novels of his I never got around to reading. I really need to.

Elmer Kelton, R.I.P.

I'm sure many of you have already heard about this, but we've lost a legend today. Elmer Kelton crossed the divide this morning. He wasn't just a fine writer, he was also one of the most genuinely decent men I've ever met. I interviewed him in front of a packed house at the Bouchercon in Austin several years ago, and his easygoing grace and charm made it a fine experience for me as well as for everyone in the audience. We also visited at every WWA convention I attended and I saw him numerous times at the annual TCU Press group book signing in Fort Worth. He got his start writing fiction by selling stories to the pulp RANCH ROMANCES, and we had several conversations about the pulps and what a fan of them he was as a kid, citing WILD WEST WEEKLY as his favorite. He'd been in bad health recently, but the last I'd heard, he had improved some, so while this doesn't come as a shock, it's certainly a surprise.

Nearly twenty years ago, I attended the WWA convention in San Angelo, Elmer's hometown. Someone at that convention, in talking about Elmer said, "He's the genuine article." I can't say it any better than that.

John R. Baker, R.I.P.

I found out today that my friend John Baker from Charleston passed away last night. John and I never met in person, but we corresponded for nearly thirty years. I don't recall for sure how we got in touch, but he may have gotten my address from Mike Avallone. John was a mystery fan who read all sorts of books, but he had a special fondness for hardboiled private eye novels and had read everything by Avallone, Richard S. Prather, Mickey Spillane, and dozens of other authors. He traded letters with a lot of them, too, typed or handwritten letters because while John eventually gave the Internet a try, he still preferred the old-fashioned way of corresponding.

Like many of us, he kept a list of everything he read and was always on the lookout for new authors he might like, or old authors whose books he wanted to reread. In one of his last letters to me, he asked if I remembered the author of a private eye series set in Tokyo and featuring an ex-G.I. who was a karate expert. I suggested he might be thinking about the Burns Bannion series by Earl Norman, and that turned out to be right.

Not surprisingly, John was also a Mike Shayne fan, and in 1984 I came out of my "retirement" as Brett Halliday to write one final Shayne story, "Fishing for Murder", which featured John and a friend of his as characters and used some of his plot suggestions. I think he enjoyed appearing in a Shayne story like that.

It hasn't quite soaked in on me that next week or next month, there won't be an envelope in the mailbox with John's distinctive handwriting on it. He sometimes signed his letters, "Your faraway friend, John". Maybe a little farther away now, John, but still a friend.

Don Coldsmith, R.I.P.

I was never a big fan of Farrah Fawcett or Michael Jackson, but I'm sorry to hear about their passing. The third death today hits a lot harder in the Western field. Don Coldsmith, who collapsed last week during the Western Writers of America convention, has passed away. I was definitely a fan of Don and his work. We weren't close friends but always talked whenever we were at the same convention. I believe we shared an agent for a while. He was a good man and a fine writer. Best known for his multi-book Spanish Bit series, he also wrote several very good stand-alone historical novels. He will definitely be missed.

David Carradine

Let me join a host of other people in expressing my sadness at the death of David Carradine. I was in college when KUNG FU first aired, and it was hard to get anything done in classes the day after every episode because everybody had to talk about what happened on KUNG FU the night before. A couple of years ago, we watched part of the first season on DVD, and the episodes held up pretty well. I enjoyed his work in plenty of other things, too. Rest in peace, Mr. Carradine.

Donald E. Westlake

The passing of Donald E. Westlake has already been widely noted (and blogged about), and nearly everyone has commented on his versatility as a writer. It's certainly true that he did fine work in a variety of genres. When talking about Westlake's work, people often mention the Parker novels he wrote as Richard Stark and the Dortmunder books and other comedies he wrote under his own name. Probably my favorites of Westlake's work, though, are the novels he wrote as Tucker Coe, about retired, disgraced cop Mitch Tobin, who functions as a reluctant and (if memory serves) unlicensed PI. These are bleak but wonderful books that really had an impact on me when I read them back in the Seventies. I may have to hunt them up and read some of them again. Rest in peace, Mr. Westlake.

Fred Grove, RIP

On the heels of the news about Bill Knott’s death comes belated word that award-winning Western author Fred Grove passed away in September. He began writing for the Western pulps in the Fifties and went on to produce numerous novels in the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties, often for Doubleday and often concerning horses and horse racing in the Old West. I don’t believe I’ve ever read any of his novels, but I have read some of his short stories (many of which have been reprinted in paperback collections from Leisure Books in recent years) and enjoyed them.

Fred is another author I met once at a Western Writers of America convention. In this case it was San Angelo in 1990. I sat next to him at a barbecue dinner that was held on a ranch west of town. I tell you, there are a lot worse ways to spend a few hours than sitting at a picnic table under some trees next to a creek, eating good barbecue and talking to Fred Grove. I had a fine time, and I’m sorry that he’s gone.

Will C. Knott, RIP

I heard the sad news today that author Bill Knott has passed away. His books were usually bylined Will C. Knott or published under a house-name. He was best known as a Western writer and contributed to three long-running series – Longarm, the Trailsman, and Slocum – as well as working on other series and writing stand-alone traditional Western novels under his own name. He also wrote several mystery novels, some house-name men’s adventure yarns, and a number of mystery and sports books for the young adult market. I don’t know how many books he wrote in his career, but more than 200, certainly.

I met Bill Knott only once, at a Western Writers of America convention in Arkansas, and didn’t know him well at all. We had a number of mutual friends, though, and I’ve read and enjoyed many, many of his books over the years. He was one of the original authors on the Longarm series (along with Mel Marshall and the series’ creator, Lou Cameron), and I had read a lot of his entries before I ever started writing for the series myself. He was also a regular contributor to the Stagecoach Station series under the house-name Hank Mitchum, just before I started writing for that series. In fact, although we wrote for many of the same series, I don’t think our tenures ever quite overlapped. (I haven’t tried to look this up, so I could well be wrong.) He was the president of WWA at one time, an important figure in the history of the Adult Western field, and a fine writer. I’m sorry to hear that he’s gone.