A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Arizona Guns - William MacLeod Raine

With some authors, you can be aware of their work for years, even decades, without ever reading any of it. That’s the way it’s been for me with William MacLeod Raine. If you’re like me and practically grew up in used bookstores during the Sixties and Seventies, you saw plenty of paperback Westerns by Raine. While he was never as popular as Zane Grey, Max Brand, or Louis L’Amour, Raine was prolific and a strong presence in the Western field for many years. Now, of course, he’s barely remembered, and based on ARIZONA GUNS, the first of his novels I’ve read, he deserves to be not only remembered but read.

Born in England in 1871, Raine moved to the American West ten years later and lived through much of the time period about which he wrote. Like Walt Coburn and another English immigrant, Fred East (who wrote as Tom West), Raine was an authentic Westerner with experience as a cowboy before he became a writer. ARIZONA GUNS was originally published in 1919 by Houghton Mifflin under the title A MAN FOUR-SQUARE. There were at least two paperback reprints under the title ARIZONA GUNS, which despite having a classic B-Western sound to it, isn’t appropriate at all. Not one bit of the novel takes place in Arizona, and the only connection is that one of the characters mentions having gone there.

Instead, nearly all the book is set in New Mexico Territory, in the fictional Washington County. If you’re sharp enough to realize that there’s a real county in New Mexico named after a famous president, you’ll have a pretty good idea where this story is going. Yep, this is another fictionalized version of the Billy the Kid saga, with the “Washington County War” taking the place of the real-life Lincoln County War. In Raine’s version, the young hero is named Jim Clanton. After growing up somewhere in the Appalachians and being involved in a feud there, Clanton goes west in search of his enemies who have fled the mountains. He winds up joining a cattle drive up the Pecos, fights outlaws and Indians, becomes friends with a cowboy named Billie Prince, meets up with his old enemies, makes new enemies, romances a couple of beautiful young women, and eventually winds up on the wrong side of the law. By this time, Clanton’s friend Billie Prince has become a lawman, making him the Pat Garrett stand-in for this story, and when Clanton is accused of murdering one of the local cattlemen, Prince has to form a posse and go after him.

Raine veers off from history in various places, so the story winds up being only loosely based on the Lincoln County War. Because of this, he’s able to throw some nice twists into the plot, especially where various romantic triangles are concerned. Romance plays a big part in this book, as was common in Westerns of the time period, especially the bestsellers authored by Zane Grey. ARIZONA GUNS reminds me quite a bit of Grey’s work, in fact, although it’s not nearly as flowery and melodramatic. Raine slips in a dark undertone to an otherwise happy ending, too, which sets it apart from Grey’s novels and the other popular Westerns of the period. The writing is a little old-fashioned in places (what else would you expect from a book written ninety years ago?), but it holds up well, the style tough and spare for the most part.

I’ve always liked Zane Grey’s plots, and when he finally got around to writing action scenes, he produced some corkers, but I also find it hard to wade through the long-winded prose in his books. If you’re the same way, I think you’d enjoy William MacLeod Raine’s novels, at least based on this one. I definitely intend to read more of them.

(This time, for a change, when I said I was going to read more by an author, I actually did. Since this post first appeared on December 12, 2008, I've read four or five more novels by William MacLeod Raine and enjoyed all of them. You can find several different e-book editions of ARIZONA GUNS/A MAN FOUR-SQUARE on Amazon for very affordable prices if you'd care to check it out.)

Review: Doomsday Mesa - Chap O'Keefe (Keith Chapman)

DOOMSDAY MESA was published originally by Robert Hale in 1995, making it one of the earliest Chap O’Keefe novels I’ve read. It’s available now in new e-book and paperback editions from Amazon. That’s a great title, and being a long-time fan of the work of Keith Chapman, the veteran writer/editor behind the O’Keefe pseudonym, I was looking forward to this one. It’s safe to say, I wasn’t disappointed.

Chapman spends a little time giving us the back-story of his protagonist Yale Cannon, who, as a young man of somewhat shady character with a reputation as a gunman, joins a wagon train heading west in the days before the Civil War. There’s a budding romance between Cannon and a young woman whose family is traveling with the wagon train, but unfortunate circumstances arise to split them up.

The story then moves ahead a couple of decades to a time when Yale Cannon, a decorated war hero and veteran Deputy U.S. Marshal, arrives in the town of Antelope, Colorado, to pick up a captured outlaw from the jail and take him back to Arizona to face charges there. Of course, things don’t work out that easily. There’s a war brewing between the local ranchers and a religious cult that’s been established on a nearby mesa where there used to be a gold mine. The ranchers believe the followers of the charismatic cult leader are rustling their stock, and they’re prepared to go to any lengths to put a stop to it, including breaking out the owlhoot Cannon’s supposed to pick up and hiring him to run off the settlers on the mesa.

That’s enough for a book right there, but Chapman packs several more plot twists into his book, including a connection to Yale Cannon’s tragic past. He weaves all these strands together until they finally result in an explosive climax and one final, very effective twist.

DOOMSDAY MESA is an excellent traditional Western novel with plenty of action and the interesting, slightly offbeat characters you’ll always find in a Chap O’Keefe novel. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and give it a solid recommendation for Western fans.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: El Cid (1962)

When I was a kid, my parents had a coffee table book about this movie that included a synopsis of the story, features on many of the actors, and stuff about the production of the movie, illustrated by lots and lots of still photos. How they wound up with this book, I don’t know. I think such volumes were sold as souvenirs in theater lobbies during so-called roadshow engagements, but my parents didn’t go see EL CID in the theater. I don’t think they ever went to an indoor movie theater in my lifetime, only the drive-in up the road a little ways from our house. But I read through that EL CID book many times, since I was already interested in movies and historical fiction. But I’d never actually seen the movie until now.

EL CID is about an actual historical figure, Rodrigo Diaz, who fought to unify Spain and protect it from Moorish invasion in the 11th Century. However, most of what we know about Diaz is a mixture of history, legend, and myth, with much of it based on an epic poem written only fifty years after his death. The movie’s script leans heavily on the legend and myth part, as you’d expect with Charlton Heston playing the character. Also as you’d expect from Hollywood in the early Sixties, almost every role in this movie about Spaniards and Moors is played by an American, an Englishman, or an Italian.

Anyway, as the movie opens, Rodrigo is about to be married to a beautiful young noblewoman played by Sophia Loren, but before the wedding takes place he gets mixed up in some political intrigue. Tragedy and exile ensue. Rodrigo befriends some Spanish Moors who are loyal to the king and gets the name El Cid from them. He works his way back into the king’s favor, and then more political intrigue upsets everything again. Sophia Loren’s character hates him for a while, then loves him again. In between all this scheming, lots of battles against various enemies take place, until finally an army of Moors from North Africa led by Herbert Lom invades Spain, setting up a final epic showdown.

Actually, it’s more like the soap opera stuff takes place in the intervals between battles. Anthony Mann is credited as the director of this movie, but I’d be willing to bet more than half of it was actually helmed by the second unit director, the legendary Yakima Canutt. I’m a long-time fan of Yak’s work as an actor, stuntman, and second unit director, and EL CID looks great. We get scene after scene featuring enormous sets and thousands of extras (most of them Spanish soldiers provided by Generalissimo Francisco Franco, who was not yet dead), and the movie looks great. I love big, elaborate spectacles like this, and there’s something very impressive about knowing what you’re seeing is really there and doesn’t exist just in some computer somewhere. I mean, special effects are great, but they’re not like a thousand guys fighting each other at once.

EL CID is a long movie, a little more than three hours. But I was never bored. There’s enough story to go along with the battles, and the cast does a good job. I’ve always liked Charlton Heston in everything I’ve seen him in. Sophia Loren doesn’t have much to do other than look beautiful, but she’s great at that. Herbert Lom, as usual, is a suitably despicable villain. I had a very good time watching EL CID. If you miss this kind of sweeping epic, as I do, and haven’t seen it, I give it a strong recommendation.

Review: Rex Brandon #1: Death Warriors - Denis Hughes

Sometimes I’m just in the mood for a jungle adventure. In 1951 and ’52, British author Denis Hughes wrote twelve novels under the pseudonym Marco Garon about Rex Brandon, a two-fisted geologist, explorer, and big game hunter, and his adventures in Africa. These were published by a British paperback publisher, and these days, the first six in the series are available as paperbacks and e-books from Bold Venture Press. They’ve been sitting on my Kindle for quite a while, so I figured it was time I read one of them.

The first book in the series, DEATH WARRIORS, finds Rex acting as an agent for the British and French governments. (I assume Rex is British, but you know, I’m not sure it ever says that in the book.) It seems that several years earlier, a geologist named Georg Traski located a deposit of a rare ore called irikum, which is more valuable for making nuclear weapons than uranium. But Traski disappeared somewhere in the jungle, and an expedition sent to look for him, led by another geologist and his beautiful daughter, never came back, either. Now Rex is going in to this dangerous area to locate the irikum deposit and find out what happened to the previous expeditions.

Well, you know with a set up like that, there are going to be plenty of adventures with wild animals (leopards, lions, and a rogue gorilla with an ear for music, in this case), despicable villains, and a madman or two. And so there is. Does it all play out about the way you’d expect? Sure it does. Is getting to all the expected destinations fun? You bet! DEATH WARRIORS has a lot of action, a stalwart protagonist in Rex Brandon, a couple of colorful sidekicks, and a beautiful, competent young woman. All the ingredients for a very entertaining jungle adventure yarn in the grand tradition. If you’re a fan of such things, like I am, I give it a high recommendation, and I look forward to reading the other Rex Brandon novels that are available.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Top-Notch, February 1936

I don't know who painted the cover on this issue of TOP-NOTCH -- Tom Lovell, maybe? -- but it's pretty dramatic. TOP-NOTCH was getting near the end of its long run by this point but was still publishing some very good authors. In this issue are stories by Arthur J. Burks, Major George Fielding-Eliot, William Merriam Rouse, Samuel Taylor, and Robert H. Leitfred. The other authors aren't familiar to me: Paul Randell Morrison, Edmund du Perrier, Hal Firanze, and Kurt von Rachen. Wait a minute, Kurt von Rachen was L. Ron Hubbard, so I guess I've heard of him after all. Controversial though he may be, I like Hubbard's pulp stories for the most part, and for all I know, those other guys were fine writers. So this is probably a decent issue. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Giant Western, June 1952

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my somewhat ragged copy in the scan. The covers aren’t in great shape, but the pages inside are really nice, just lightly tanned and very supple. I think the cover art is by Sam Cherry, but I’m not absolutely sure about that.

For a change, a story in a pulp billed as a novel actually is long enough to be considered one. “Nobody’s Neutral in Kansas” by Roe Richmond is about 40,000 words, I’m guessing, maybe even a little longer. It’s only sort of a Western, though, more of a historical yarn taking place in Kansas in the late 1850s and early 1860s and dealing with the violence there between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the lead-up to the Civil War. Rupe Maitland and his father and brother have come from the east and settled on a farm in Kansas, and they just want to be left alone instead of taking sides in the conflict. But then tragedy occurs, hostilities increase, and inevitably Rupe and his family and friends are drawn into the bloody clashes. Roe Richmond knew how to keep a story moving along briskly and his action scenes are excellent. The biggest problem I have with this story is how unrelentingly bleak and grim it is. Of course, given the subject matter, it couldn’t exactly be a light-hearted romp. Still, it makes for heavy reading. But worthwhile, I’d say. (As a bibliographic aside, there’s a story of the same title by Richmond in the December 1951 issue of REAL WESTERN STORIES, but it’s much shorter. I haven’t read it, so I have no idea if Richmond expanded it for this version in GIANT WESTERN or if he just liked the title and they’re completely different stories.)

I don’t recall reading much by Cliff Walter in the past. He was a prolific contributor to the Western pulps. His story “Montana Man” in this issue is about a colorful old mountain man and his encounter with some settlers. It’s written in a folksy, supposedly humorous style that fell completely flat with me. Didn’t like it at all and wound up skimming through it.

I’ve found Robert L. Trimnell’s work to be a little inconsistent, but when he’s on his game, his stories are really, really good. His novelette in this issue has a pretty generic title, “Gun For Hire”, so I was a tad bit leery of it, but it didn’t take me long to realize that this is a terrific yarn. Tough Texas cowboy Mike Morrow trail bosses a herd to Montana, and once it’s been delivered, the crew blows off some well-earned steam in a night of drinking and debauchery. Unfortunately for Mike, when he wakes up the next morning, he has more than a hangover to contend with. He’s been framed for murder, and he winds up in the middle of a war between two rustlers, one of whom happens to be a beautiful young woman with a fondness for wearing red silk shirts with nothing under them. (Yeah, it’s a little risqué for a Western pulp story in 1952.) Mike is blackmailed into working for the young woman, but mostly he wants to sort things out and keep her from getting into too much trouble. Trimnell tells the story in hardboiled prose that reminded me of 1950s Gold Medal crime novels even more than the Western Gold Medals. He even provides a small but effective twist in the big showdown at the end. This is one of the best Western pulp stories I’ve read in a while.

Giff Cheshire is yet another author who’s hit-or-miss with me. “Drivers’ Pass” in this issue centers around the conflict between a railroad spur line being built into a mining town and the freight outfit that hauls goods with mules and wagons. It’s an interesting, well-written story that suffers from a really rushed ending, but other than that, I liked it.

Inconsistency seems to be an unofficial theme of this issue. I’ve read plenty of very good novels and stories by William Hopson, but I’ve read some that were pretty bad, too. His story “The Blue Mule” wraps up the fiction in this issue. Which was it going to be? This story is narrated by the eight-year-old son of a horse trader and starts out like it’s going to be a humorous, Doc Swap sort of story. Then it gets more serious with the introduction of a bully and a new county attorney from the east. The plot meanders around as if Hopson couldn’t decide what he wanted to write about and comes to an inconclusive ending. I hate to say it because I like Hopson’s work more often than not, but despite the narrator’s engaging voice, this just isn’t much of a story and isn’t very good.

I believe this is the first issue of GIANT WESTERN I’ve ever read, and it’s very much a mixed bag. The Trimnell story is fantastic, the Richmond novel is very good if depressing, the Cheshire story is okay, and the other two stories I didn’t like at all. Don’t go running to your shelves to look for this one, but if you do have a copy, I highly suggest you check out Trimnell’s yarn.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Backwoods - Edward Lee

I was in the mood to read a horror novel, and having heard good things about Edward Lee’s work, I decided to try one of his. I knew his books have a reputation for containing a lot of extreme violence and a considerable amount of sex, so I wasn’t really surprised to encounter both of those things in THE BACKWOODS. It’s the story of high-powered Washington D.C. attorney Patricia White, who returns to the small town in rural Virginia where she grew up for her brother-in-law’s funeral. What she finds there are all sorts of sinister, dangerous secrets, including a clan of mysterious backwoods folks who practice an ancient religion of their own and a series of bizarre murders that have no rational explanation.

Well, those of you who have read very many horror novels will know right away where some of these plot elements are going, and I was somewhat disappointed that there weren’t more plot twists along the way. Lee does include some surprises in his story, though, and tells it in fast-paced, evocative prose that’s fun to read. I found enough to like here that I’m definitely interested in reading more of his books. Although it’s not for everybody, I’d recommend THE BACKWOODS to anyone who likes the novels of, say, Richard Laymon – which I do, quite a bit.

(As usual, despite the intention stated above, I haven't read anything else by Edward Lee since this post first appeared on December 7, 2008. The image above is from the Leisure paperback edition I read back then. THE BACKWOODS is still in print in e-book and trade paperback editions, as are numerous others of his books. I would say that I ought to check out some of them, but, well, you know how that seems to go with me.)

Review: Jubal Stone, U.S. Marshal: The Town With No Tongue - Casey Nash

U.S. Marshal Jubal Stone and Deputy U.S. Marshal Tanner Burns, who work out of Waco, Texas, are sent to a settlement in west Texas to bring back two prisoners. When they get there, they discover that no one in town is willing to talk to them except the two local lawmen. The citizens aren’t unable to speak—they’re afraid to!

That’s the intriguing premise of THE TOWN WITH NO TONGUE, the latest installment in the long-running Jubal Stone series by prolific author Casey Nash. I don’t believe I’ve ever run across this particular plot before, and when you’ve read as many Westerns as I have, that’s saying something.

THE TOWN WITH NO TONGUE has another oddball element to it, and that’s the appearance of a dime novelist who happens to be named James Reasoner. Well, “happens to be” is stretching things, since I knew Nash was going to feature me as a character in this book, along with my faithful canine friend Marlowe, and I have to say, he captures us both pretty well. Eagle-eyed readers will spot a couple of other familiar names, too.

This is a fast-moving, entertaining yarn with a couple of very likable protagonists. It’s actually the first book I’ve read in the series, and I’m going to have to go back and catch up on some of the others. THE TOWN WITH NO TONGUE, another strong entry from Dusty Saddle Publishing, is available in e-book and paperback editions.

Movie Review: Elevation (2024)

This movie came out in 2024, so I don’t really think it’s old enough to consider it a Movie I’ve Missed Until Now. In fact, I think I’ll just slap an arbitrary rule on here and say that a movie has to have come out before 2020 in order to get that designation. However, ELEVATION is, in fact, a movie I never heard of until I came across it recently and decided to give it a try.

During the pitch meeting for this movie, somebody is bound to have said, “It’s like A QUIET PLACE, only instead of being quiet so the scary monsters won’t get you, you have to stay above 8,000 feet in elevation so the scary monsters won’t get you.” That’s the plot, boiled down. A brief prologue clues us in that several years earlier, giant sinkholes suddenly opened all over the world and indestructible monsters came out to massacre 95% of Earth’s population.

Giant sinkholes with monsters coming out of them immediately makes me think of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and my first question is, “Hey, where’s the Mole Man?” Well, nowhere in sight in this movie. No superheroes come to the rescue. Earth gets its butt kicked, and the monsters have taken over the world except for a few colonies of survivors established above 8,000 feet.

Anthony Mackie and his young son live in one such colony in Colorado, but the boy needs some medical equipment to survive, so he sets off for Boulder with a scientist played by Morena Baccarin. She’s obsessed with finding a way to kill the monsters and believes that if she can reach her lab there, she’ll be able to do so. Unfortunately, Boulder is below 8,000 feet.

Most of the movie consists of them getting there and back, with lots of danger and adventure along the way. And it’s decently done, too. The special effects look a little crude now and then, but overall the movie worked for me. Mackie and Baccarin both do decent jobs. There are a few other characters, but the movie is really theirs to carry. There’s no sex, and despite the presence of scary monsters and death, very little gore.

I was going to gripe about how we don’t even get any handwavium to explain the plot, but then late in the movie there’s a twist that actually does explain some things while opening up other questions. I’ve seen speculation on-line that this movie was made as a pilot for an unsold streaming series, and the plot twist and a mid-credits epilogue make a strong case for that. I liked it enough I wouldn’t have minded seeing it continue. As is, it’s not exactly an overlooked gem, but it is an enjoyable hour and a half and I’m glad we watched it.

Review: Tex: Cinnamon Wells - Chuck Dixon and Mario Alberti

This is the second volume I’ve read from the set of six Tex Willer graphic novels I backed on Kickstarter. Chuck Dixon is one of my all-time favorite comic book authors, and ever since I found out he wrote some Tex stories, I’ve been curious about them.

CINNAMON WELLS, which has artwork by Mario Alberti, opens with a violent bank robbery in the town of the title. The local lawman is organizing a posse to go after the outlaws when Tex, who is a Texas Ranger, rides in. He joins the posse, of course, and off they go after the bank robbers.

Posse stories are one of my favorite Western sub-genres, and Dixon does some unexpected and enjoyable things in this one, rather than sticking with the standard plot. Eventually it’s just Tex and one prisoner on the trail of the gang. That prisoner becomes a reluctant ally when they encounter an unrelated threat. That leads up to a classic showdown and an epilogue that’s also unexpected but quite satisfying.

This volume has some interesting angles besides the story and art. As I was reading it, some of the dialogue seemed, well, unDixon-like. Curious about that, I went to the source, and Chuck confirmed that his script was written in English, translated into Italian for this story’s original appearance, and then translated back into English for this volume by someone else. So it’s Dixon’s plot all the way, but the words are only sort of his. Despite the occasional awkwardness, the script moves along briskly, and Alberti’s art works well for me, too. CINNAMON WELLS is a fast, entertaining read.

Chuck also told me this story was inspired by the many hardboiled Western movies starring Randolph Scott, a mutual favorite of yours, and the outlaw who’s both ally and enemy to Tex is modeled on actor Henry Silva, who played one of the villains in the Scott film THE TALL T. I love finding out this kind of background info, and my thanks to Chuck for answering my questions and allowing me to pass it along here.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, December 1, 1932

I've been quite a fan of Hubert Rogers' pulp covers. Here's another very good one on this issue of ADVENTURE. There's a fine lineup of authors inside, too, including Walt Coburn, Gordon Young, William MacLeod Raine, Lawrence G. Blochman, Paul Annixter, and Ared White. If you'd like to check out this issue for yourself, you can find it on the Internet Archive.  

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Two Gun Western Stories, October 1929

TWO GUN WESTERN STORIES is a pretty obscure Western pulp, although it managed to run for about four years during the late Twenties and early Thirties. I've never seen an issue of it. The cover on this issue is by Fred I. Good, an artist I've never heard of. It has some good authors in its pages, though: L.P. Holmes, Archie Joscelyn, John G. Pearsol, Raymond W. Porter, and Arthur H. Carhart. It also has some authors whose names aren't familiar to me at all: K. Carleton Unthank, Francis W. Hilton, and Gordon E. Warnke.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Hottest Fourth of July in the History of Hangtree County - Clifton Adams

A lot of Western authors have written Fourth of July novels. It’s a situation with plenty of built-in dramatic possibilities: hot weather, small town, lots of people crowded in, etc. I believe Harry Whittington’s well-regarded Gold Medal Western SADDLE THE STORM is a Fourth of July novel. Not sure because it’s been a lot of years since I read it. 

THE HOTTEST FOURTH OF JULY IN THE HISTORY OF HANGTREE COUNTY is Clifton Adams’ entry in this little sub-genre, and it’s a good one. The title itself is an ironic joke, because, as it’s explained in the novel, Hangtree County is only three years old. The book is set in Oklahoma in 1892, three years after the territory was opened for settlement. All the action takes place in one day, which places the novel in another sub-genre I like, books with a compressed time span.

Marshal Ott Gillman is getting too old to be a lawman, or at least he thinks he is. His deputy is another old-timer, even though he’s still known as Kid Fulmer, just as he was when he was a young outlaw in Texas before going straight. They make a good pair, both still more capable than they think they are, but this Fourth of July tests their ability to keep law and order because of all the outsiders coming into town for the celebration. Not everyone is in town because of the holiday, though. Some of them show up because of an old grudge against Marshal Gillman, and violence threatens to break out along with the festivities.

This isn’t a Grand Hotel sort of book with a lot of interweaving storylines, as Adams keeps the focus on Ott Gillman and the danger facing him, as well as several moral dilemmas the marshal has to grapple with. The pace is deliberate, even slow, for most of the book, but the occasional scenes of violence are sudden and brutal and effective. Anybody who thinks that all Westerns are just shoot-em-ups should read a book like this, which is almost all characterization and mood. Everything leads up to a very suspenseful climax.

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on September 12, 2008. You'll hardly ever go wrong with a novel or story by Clifton Adams. He's one of the most consistent Western writers I've found when it comes to solid, entertaining yarns. This novel isn't currently in print, but his series about another lawman, Amos Flagg, written under the pseudonym Clay Randall, is available in e-book editions from Piccadilly Publishing, and I highly recommend those books, too.)

Review: Fair Blows the Wind - Louis L'Amour

I argued back and forth with myself quite a bit before I wrote this review. But I’ll get to that. Also, there are some minor spoilers scattered throughout this post, but no more than you find in a lot of book reviews.

First of all, look at this opening line: “My name is Tatton Chantry and unless the gods are kind to rogues, I shall die within minutes.” Isn’t that great? With an opening line like that, how can you not want to keep reading?

It’s the late 16th Century as this novel opens, and our narrator/protagonist Tatton Chantry (not actually his real name, as author Louis L’Amour alludes to often) is an Irishman who has already lived an adventurous life. He has traveled to the New World on an English trading vessel and is marooned on what will someday be the Carolina coast when Indians attack a shore party. While escaping from the Indians, he runs into a group of Spaniards and Peruvians who were also stranded there when their ship began to sink. Chantry suspects treachery from the Spaniards, falls in love with a beautiful Peruvian aristocrat, and meets another castaway who has been living on these barrier islands for a couple of years.

All this leads up to a long flashback that takes up about two-thirds of the book and tells us about Chantry’s life as a fugitive in England and Scotland (his father in Ireland was murdered, and the family estate was destroyed), his various meetings with various scoundrels, gypsies, friends, and enemies, and his efforts to make himself into a master swordsman. Eventually he becomes a successful trader and even a published author of novels, poems, and plays. Then he’s a mercenary soldier and fights in various wars all over Europe before circumstances finally take him to America and we’re back where we started. It’s a busy life.

Now we get to the arguing with myself part. I always feel like when a Western writer says anything negative about Louis L’Amour, there’s a perception of sour grapes. Sometimes it’s more than just a perception, although I honestly don’t think that’s true in this case. But I finally decided to forge ahead with it anyway.

The framing sequence in this book that’s set in the New World is terrific. By itself, it would have made a fine short novel. Tatton Chantry is a tough, likable protagonist and you can’t help but root for him. The flashback is a different story, no pun intended. There are some wonderful scenes in it, but a lot of it just goes on and on and serves very little function. Again and again, L’Amour sets up some plot twist or new storyline, and then totally ignores it for the rest of the book, leaving things unexplained. What’s Chantry’s real name? Why is his life in danger if he ever returns to Ireland? Who’s that mysterious woman? What about the guy who keeps popping up to pull his chestnuts out of the fire? Who’s he? We don’t know. L’Amour never tells us.

There are also numerous continuity glitches of the sort he was notorious for. Chantry has a bag of gold, then he loses it, then he has it again with no explanation. It’s day, then it’s night, then it’s day again, all while one scene is going on. L’Amour said he never revised his work, never even looked at it again after he wrote the first draft. Mistakes like that certainly seem to indicate he was telling the truth.

At the same time, the settings are rendered beautifully, the dialogue is always good, and the ending of this one is great. L’Amour doesn’t hold back on the epic showdown between Chantry and his longtime mortal enemy, and it’s very satisfying.

So my overall opinion of FAIR BLOWS THE WIND is about as mixed as you can get. It’s one of several books from late in L’Amour’s career I never got around to reading, and I’m glad I finally did. It’s mostly entertaining and kept me turning the pages, but it’s also a prime example of the things about his writing that bother me. I suspect that mileage may vary a lot from reader to reader on this one. Like all of L’Amour’s work, it’s been reprinted numerous times and is available in just about any format you can think of. The image above just happens to be the paperback edition I read.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Easter Parade (1948)

Considering that I’m not a big fan of musicals, Fred Astaire, or Judy Garland, it’s not surprising that I never saw EASTER PARADE, a 1948 movie starring those two. But hey, it’s almost Easter, so why not?

You need at least a little plot to hang the songs and production numbers on in a musical, and that’s what you get in EASTER PARADE, a little plot. It’s 1912, and song-and-dance man Don Hewes (Astaire) has his partner in the act (the gorgeous Ann Miller) abruptly desert him to sign with the Ziegfield Follies instead. Angered by this, Hewes tells her he could pick any girl out of a chorus line and make a bigger star out of her. That turns out to be Hannah Brown (Garland), and sure enough, she does become a bigger star and she and Hewes fall in love, although their romance is a rocky one. There’s also a bit of a romantic rectangle with Hewes’ buddy Johnny (played by Peter Lawford, another non-favorite of mine) getting involved with both Garland and Miller.

There’s nothing wrong with that plot. It’s very similar in some respects to the plot of the much better SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN. The script was written by Sidney Sheldon, Frances Goodrich, and Albert Hackett. Goodrich and Hackett contributed to the scripts of some great movies, THE THIN MAN and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE among them, and Sheldon won an Academy Award for his screenwriting long before he created the TV show I DREAM OF JEANNIE and became a bestselling novelist. I’ve enjoyed every one of Sheldon’s novels I’ve read, and I was a regular viewer of I DREAM OF JEANNIE when it was new (admittedly, that was mostly because of Barbara Eden and the great character actor Bill Daily). But I’ve been less impressed by the movies he wrote. The script for EASTER PARADE is thin and predictable and only mildly amusing.

The real stars, of course, are the songs by Irving Berlin. The movie wouldn’t exist without them. They’re okay, but after watching the movie, I don’t remember a single one of them except the title song and “Steppin’ Out With My Baby”, the subject of a long, elaborate production number that’s the highlight of the film. Astaire is at his best in that scene, and it’s the only one in the movie that put a grin on my face.

So EASTER PARADE is okay, one of many movie musicals I’ve seen once and enjoyed, and I’m glad we watched it. There are only three musicals I regard as great films, though: WHITE CHRISTMAS, SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN, and BIKINI BEACH. The first two are classics, and before you look too askance at me for that last one, consider: BIKINI BEACH has Frankie Avalon playing both Frankie and British rocker The Potato Bug, Don Rickles as Big Drag, Harvey Lembeck as Eric Von Zipper, a cameo by Boris Karloff, a song by Little Stevie Wonder, and the absolute best closing credits sequence in the history of cinema, Candy Johnson and Renie Riano dancing to “I’ve Gotcha Where I Want You,” by Candy’s band The Exciters. Now that, my friends, is classic filmmaking, and I grinned all the way through it every time I’ve watched it.

Review: Apache Rising - Marvin H. Albert

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 imprint devoted to reprinting classic hardboiled Western novels. It’s from the fine folks at Stark House Press, who have reprinted some Westerns in their regular Stark House books and in their Black Gat Books line. Now the Westerns have a line of their own, and I couldn’t be happier about it.

Nor could they have picked a better book to launch Whipcrack Westerns. APACHE RISING by Marvin H. Albert was published originally by Gold Medal in 1957 and later reprinted by GM under that title as well as DUEL AT DIABLO, the title of the movie based on this novel. It’s been out of print for a long time, though, and it’s great to see it back. I had never read it, so I’m glad to get this chance.

Oddly enough, considering my history of watching Western movies, I’ve never seen DUEL AT DIABLO, so I went into this source novel with no real preconceptions. The protagonist is Jess Remsberg, a tough, seasoned civilian scout for the army who is searching for the man who raped and murdered his wife. That search takes him to southern Arizona Territory and involves him with a cavalry detail taking some wagons full of ammunition from one fort to another. There are rumors that an Apache war chief is about to bring his followers out of Mexico and start raiding again, and the army is getting ready to campaign against him.

At the same time, Jess’s quest is complicated by an American woman who was captured by the Apaches and held captive for a couple of years, only to be rescued by the army and brought back to her husband, who no longer wants her. And she wants to return to the Apaches and the baby she had with the war chief’s son. Both she and her estranged husband wind up traveling with the same cavalry detail as Jess, as does a gambler who’s a former Confederate soldier.

You may think this sounds a little like a frontier soap opera, and it could have been if not for Albert’s storytelling ability and his skill at creating morally complex characters. It helps that there’s plenty of tough, gritty action as the group gets attacked by Apaches numerous times, and the reader honestly doesn’t know who’s going to survive to the end of the perilous journey. This is a really suspenseful novel that had me flipping the pages swiftly to find out what was going to happen.

The Whipcrack Western edition of this book also includes a fine introduction by Eric Compton and Tom Simon, the guys behind the Paperback Warrior blog and podcast, who provide an entertaining, informative look at Albert’s life and career.

I’ve never read a book by Marvin Albert I didn’t enjoy, and APACHE RISING continues that history. It’s a superb hardboiled Western novel, and I give it a very high recommendation. The paperback edition will be out later this week, and it’s available for pre-order now. I assume there’ll be an e-book edition, too, once the book is released.

And I’m very much looking forward to seeing what the next Whipcrack Western will be.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure Yarns, December 1938

This is the second and final issue of a very short-lived adventure pulp from Columbia Publications, edited by Abner J. Sundell who edited most of Columbia's pulps that weren't edited by Robert W. Lowndes. The cover on this issue of ADVENTURE YARNS is by A. Leslie Ross, and a quite adventurous one it is. There's a strong lineup of authors in this issue, as well: Eugene Cunningham, Will F. Jenkins (twice, once under his name and another story as by his famous pseudonym Murray Leinster), Armand Brigaud, L. Ron Hubbard (controversial now but a popular and prolific pulpster then), house-names Cliff Campbell (Sundell, in this case, according to the Fictionmags Index) and James Rourke, along with lesser-known writers Stephen Cumberland, Frank Couch, and Kenneth P. Wood. When a pulp runs for only a very few issues like this, I always wonder if it was never intended to last but was just a way of burning off inventory. I don't know if that's true in this case, but it certainly seems possible.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, May 1948

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, with a dramatic and very effective cover by Sam Cherry. I’ve always liked leather shirt cuffs like the ones the cowboy on this cover is wearing.

“Brains in Broken Fork”, the featured novelette in this issue, opens with our intrepid range detective due Tombstone Jones and Speedy Smith on their way to the cowtown of Broken Fork on a rainy night. They start to take shelter from the storm in an isolated cabin, only to find it occupied by a recently deceased corpse, and a rather active one, at that, since it starts to move around and startles our heroes into lighting a shuck out of there.

After that atmospheric opening, the rest of the story is the usual mix of action, mystery, colorful characters, and humorous dialogue. Tombstone and Speedy have been sent to Broken Fork to corral some rustlers, but they find that an old robbery and a cache of missing loot are mixed up in the case, as well. And of course, there’s a pretty girl, an old sheriff, and a deputy who’s smarter than he looks, which is a good description of Tombstone and Speedy, too. As much as I enjoy this series—and I got some good chuckles out of this one—it still strikes me as one of the more uninspired entries. The plot relies heavily on elements that author W.C. Tuttle has employed in other Tombstone and Speedy yarns, and unless I missed something, he leaves one fairly important plot point completely unresolved, as if he totally forgot about it. Tuttle definitely wasn’t at the top of his game in this one, although I enjoyed reading it.

“Shotgun Nester” is by Ray Hayton, an author I’m unfamiliar with. He appears to have been rather prolific for a while, turning out 20 stories in various Western pulps from 1946 to 1948. According to the Fictionmags Index, he died at 1947 at a young age, so I was intrigued enough to do a little research. Turns out he was from Monroe, Louisiana, but committed suicide in New York City when he was only 25. His obituary on the Find A Grave website says that he served in the Army during World War II and had been writing since high school. More than half of his published fiction came out after his death, so he had stories in inventory at several magazines. Judging by “Shotgun Nester”, he was a decent writer. The protagonist is a sodbuster with a chip on his shoulder who clashes with the local cattle baron. It’s a pretty traditional story, nothing special, but well-written. I have to wonder why a writer who was apparently selling stories hand over fist would kill himself, but there’s always a lot more going on in people’s lives than we know, isn’t there?

I’m happy to report that Navajo Tom Raine makes an appearance in this issue, in the novelette “A Ranger to Reckon With”. This series, published under the house-name Jackson Cole, was created by Lee Bond, who shared writing duties on it with C. William Harrison. I’m convinced this story is by Lee Bond. For one thing, the characters stand around explaining the plot to each other, a very common technique in Bond’s stories. For another, the final shootout pits Raine against three villains, a setup that occurs in almost every story I’ve ever read by him. In this one, Raine is sent to find out who’s responsible for lynching three sodbusters. Despite being familiar, it plays out just fine and is an enjoyable read.

The last time I read a Ben Frank story, I surprised myself by kind of liking it. His story in this issue, “Circle C Checker Coup”, doesn’t have a promising title. I was expecting a humorous yarn about a checker game. Well, checkers figures in the plot, all right, but so do robbery and murder. The protagonist is a young cowhand who has a photographic memory, something I don’t think I’ve encountered before in a Western pulp yarn. I liked this one, too, quite a bit, in fact.

“Stranger in Rocky Gulch” is by Reeve Walker, a Thrilling Group house-name, so I don’t know who wrote it and couldn’t hazard a guess from reading the story. It’s about a young trail boss trying to get home with the money from selling his herd, only to be detoured into a poker game with some sinister characters. It’s a decent story, slightly unpredictable in how it plays out.

The novelette “Owlhoot Buckaroo” is the second appearance in this issue by Lee Bond (assuming I’m right about him being the author of the Navajo Tom Raine story). This stand-alone story is about a young cowboy who spent ten years being raised by an outlaw gang, although he didn’t take part in any of their criminal activities. He’s trying to put that shady past behind him, but of course, it keeps coming back to haunt him, especially when he tries to save a ranch belonging to a beautiful young woman. Although the plot is pretty standard stuff, this is an excellent story, well-written with good characters and plenty of action. Bond was a formulaic writer but capable of turning out a really good yarn. This is one of the best I’ve read by him.

“Lead Evens the Score” is by the prolific Gladwell Richardson. The protagonist is a young cowboy who returns to a crooked town to get even with the stable owner, saloonkeeper, and sheriff who robbed him on his previous visit. He discovers he’s not the only one with a grudge against that trio and has to move fast to settle their hash himself. I haven’t read a lot by Richardson. This story is okay, if nothing special.

“Judge Guppy’s Colt Law” sounds like it might be a humorous story, which is not something I expect from Wayne D. Overholser. But no, this tale of a frontier jurist trying to save a young cowboy from a murder frame is the straightforward, slightly dour sort of Western yarn Overholser usually turned out. It’s not bad, but I’ve never been a big fan of Overholser’s work and this one didn’t convert me.

Overall, this is a good issue of EXCITING WESTERN, although I wouldn’t say it’s one of the best I’ve read. With a slightly below average but still entertaining Tombstone and Speedy yarn, a good but not outstanding Navajo Tom Raine story, and better than expected tales by Lee Bond (under his own name) and Ben Frank, it’s worth reading if you have a copy on your shelves.

Review: Shane and Jonah #1: Gun Law at Hangman's Creek - Cole Shelton (Roger Norris-Green)

I’ve been a fan of Australian Westerns ever since I read the American editions of Len Meares’ Larry and Stretch books and Big Jim books (Larry and Streak and Nevada Jim in the Bantam editions I read in high school). But for a long time, few of them were readily available in the United States. In addition to those “Marshal McCoy” books (the pen-name on the original Australian editions was Marshall Grover), Leisure did some double-volume reprints by various Australian authors, but that’s about it. Now, of course, in the e-book era, we have access to many, many more of these books, thanks in large part to the fine folks at Piccadilly Publishing and Bold Venture Press.

Which brings us to Shane and Jonah, a long-running series by “Cole Shelton”, who was really Roger Norris-Green, who is not only still alive and writing, thankfully, but is also my Facebook friend. Another friend and fellow author, Brent Towns, recently recommended the Shane and Jonah books to me, so I checked out the first one, GUN LAW AT HANGMAN’S CREEK.

Shane is Shane Preston, once a happily married rancher, but when his wife is brutally murdered by outlaws, he becomes a deadly hired gun to support himself as he searches for the killers. This is back-story, and by the time this book opens, Shane has settled the score with all but one of his quarry, but he’ll continue the search for as long as it takes.

His sidekick is Jonah Jones, a pudgy, white-bearded old-timer who saved Shane’s life when he was wounded. The two of them drift through the West, sometimes working as hired guns, sometimes as bounty hunters. In GUN LAW AT HANGMAN’S CREEK, they’re summoned to the settlement of the title to serve as town taming lawmen, since Hangman’s Creek has been taken over by a corrupt, vicious saloon owner and the gun-wolves who work for him. Shane doesn’t want to just wipe out the bad guys, he wants to rally the decent citizens of the town behind him so they won’t allow anyone to run roughshod over them again.

That’s the extent of the plot, and while it’s pretty traditional, the story plays out in fine fashion thanks to Norris-Green’s deft touch with character, his appealing protagonists, and some top-notch action scenes. He does a good job of capturing the setting, too, and everything comes across as suitably authentic. GUN LAW AT HANGMAN’S CREEK is a fast, satisfying read, just the sort of thing I’m looking for in a Western. I plan to read more of the Shane and Jonah series, so I’m glad they’re being reprinted. This one is available in an e-book edition from Piccadilly Publishing and a double-volume paperback edition from Bold Venture Press. By the way, I couldn’t find an image of the original edition from Cleveland Publishing in Australia or when it came out, so if any of you have either of those things, please let me know and I’ll add it to the post. 

Review: Taming the Nueces Strip: The Story of McNelly's Rangers - George Durham as told to Clyde Wantland

I mentioned the other day that I sometimes read Western history books, and here’s a good example. As research for the second Johnny Colt novel (currently being written), I just read TAMING THE NUECES STRIP: THE STORY OF McNELLY’S RANGERS by George Durham as told to Clyde Wantland.

Durham was a member of Captain Leander McNelly’s Special Force of Texas Rangers that was sent to the Nueces Strip are of Texas, between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande, to clean out the rustlers and outlaws plaguing the area in the 1870s. Years later, Durham told the story to journalist Wantland, who turned the old Ranger’s reminiscences into this book first published in 1962.

And it’s a great yarn, not the least bit dry and academic. Most of it, in fact, reads like a novel, and I had a fine time reading it. I’m pretty sure I read it when I was in college for the Life and Literature of the Southwest course I took, and I knew quite a bit about McNelly and his Rangers from other research over the years, but that didn’t prepare me for the vividness and sense of authenticity found in this account. It’s a fine example of Texana and Western history, and if you’re interested in those subjects, I give it a very high recommendation. TAMING THE NUECES STRIP is still in print in e-book and paperback editions.

And if you’ll allow me an infrequent bit of blatant self-promotion, JOHNNY COLT #2: BLOOD ON THE BORDER will be along presently from Dusty Saddle Productions.

Review: Kid Colt, Outlaw #106, September 1962

I was feeling nostalgic, so I bought all the issues available on Kindle of KID COLT, OUTLAW, one of my favorite Western comic books when I was a kid. The first one I read, eager to see if it held up, was #106, with a cover date of September 1962. The cover art is by Jack Kirby with inks by Dick Ayers, a combination I always loved.

As usual, the Kid Colt story in this issue was written by Stan Lee with art by Jack Keller. In “The Circus of Crime!”, our hero Kid Colt (an outlaw unjustly accused of a crime and forced to go on the run) is being chased by a posse when he throws in with a traveling circus in order to elude pursuit. The owner of the circus seems a little too eager to shelter a wanted outlaw, but we quickly discover there’s a reason for that: the circus performers are all outlaws, too, and use their travels to cover up their bank robbing spree! Well, the Kid’s not going to put up with this, of course, so we get some nice scenes of him clashing with the strongman, the knife thrower, the acrobats, the tightrope walker, etc. In the end, he brings the owlhoots to justice and rides off before the local law can corral him. Lee’s script moves along nicely, as they always did, and other than constantly misspelling Abilene as Abiline, it comes across as reasonably authentic for a Western yarn. I always liked Jack Keller’s art when I was a kid, but it seems a little inconsistent to me now with some excellent panels and some that are rather crude and sketchy. But I still found it enjoyable.

The lead story has 13 pages, and it’s followed by a couple of 5-page backup stories. “The Black Mask”, again written by Lee but with art by Dick Ayers this time, is a pretty traditional tale about a lawman trying to track down a masked bandit. Even though it’s only 5 pages, it has a couple of minor plot twists in it. Ayers’ art is really good, too, reminding me of Joe Kubert in places. I don’t know what sort of reputation Ayers has these days as an artist, but I loved his long run on SGT. FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS and consider him Kirby’s second-best inker from those days, behind Joe Sinnott.

The issue wraps up with a 5-page Kid Colt story, again by Lee and Keller, called “Fury at Fort Tioga”. The Kid is captured and winds up at a fort under attack by Apaches. He comes up with a novel way of ending the attack. This is kind of an oddball story and I’m not sure I buy the plot, but it’s the kind of ending you don’t see often in a Western comic book from those days.

Overall, I enjoyed this issue quite a bit. It’s nice to read a simple, well-told comic book story that has a beginning, middle, and end and no need to read the previous 400 issues to know what’s going on. If you’re hankerin’ to give the Kid a try, you can find the e-book edition on Amazon.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Easy Virtue (2008)

I’d never heard of this movie, let alone seen it, and I’m not a huge fan of British drawing room comedies, but hey, I liked DOWNTON ABBEY, so why not give it a try?

EASY VIRTUE is based on one of Noel Coward’s lesser-known plays. A young Brit from an aristocratic family is touring Europe when he meets and falls in love with a female race car driver from America. He marries her and takes her home to introduce her to his eccentric and somewhat dysfunctional family. Cultures clash and witty banter ensues, along with a few surprisingly poignant dramatic moments, leading up to a so-so but somewhat satisfying conclusion.

Jessica Biel plays the young race car driver. She’s gorgeous, no doubt about that, and although some of the reviews for this movie fault her acting, I thought she was okay. I’ve always liked Colin Firth, and he’s fine as Biel’s new father-in-law with some dark secrets in his past. The rest of the cast is all right, and the movie looks great. It sort of plods along at times, but overall, I enjoyed it. Except . . .

The filmmakers make the choice to use deliberately anachronistic music in the score, a technique that seldom works for me. In this movie, it’s not too jarring other than the moment we hear the theme from CAR WASH, but I’m still not a fan of it. (I did, however, love CAR WASH when I saw it back in the Seventies, but that’s neither here nor there.) The other problem I have with this movie is that it has a cute little dog in it, and (SPOILER) the dog does indeed die. So if this bothers you, be warned. I might not have even watched it if I had known.

And that wouldn’t have been a great loss. EASY VIRTUE isn’t a terrible movie, and it has some very nice moments scattered through it. But I can only give it a mixed recommendation at best, if you’re a big Noel Coward and/or Colin Firth fan.

Review: Secret Agent X vs. Doctor Death - Will Murray

Will Murray has written the Wild Adventures of Doc Savage, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, The Spider, and Cthulhu, and included in those books such iconic characters as The Shadow, John Carter, King Kong, G-8, Operator 5, the Suicide Squad (the original pulp version), and others I’m probably forgetting. Now he tackles another famous pulp character, along with some more obscure ones, in SECRET AGENT X VS. DOCTOR DEATH.

Secret Agent X, for those of you unfamiliar with the character, was a master of disguise who could pretend to be anybody, almost at a moment’s notice. A former intelligence agent, he has abandoned his former identity to fight crime as the nameless, faceless Secret Agent X. He starred in his own pulp that ran for more than forty issues from Ace Magazines. The character was created by Paul Chadwick and written by Chadwick and various other pulp hands, most notably G.T. Fleming-Roberts.

On the other hand, we know who Doctor Death was. A former academic named Dr. Rance Mandarin, he is a master of both scientific and mystical arts and believes our modern society should be wiped out so Earth can return to a more primitive state. One of the few super-villains to headline his own pulp, he appeared in several short stories and five novels, all of which have been reprinted by Altus Press. (I own these volumes but haven’t read them.) Doctor Death was the creation of Harold Ward, who penned the novels under the pseudonym “Zorro”. (I don’t know what Don Diego Vega, or Johnston McCulley, for that matter, had to say about that.)

Anyway, at the end of the final Doctor Death novel, he was apparently, probably, maybe dead. I think we all know how unlikely that is. And sure enough, in SECRET AGENT X VS. DOCTOR DEATH, the crazed genius has returned and menaces humankind again with a bat-owl that can compel people to commit suicide, a couple of minotaurs, a flock of harpies, a ray that can transmute people and objects into golden-colored stone, and other threats that, again, I’m probably forgetting. Who can stop his campaign of terror?

Well, police detective Jimmy Holm, who battled Doctor Death in his previous appearances, intends to try. So does Secret Agent X, and after clashing a few times with the deadly doctor without much success, he recruits a Secret Circle of fellow pulp heroes: criminologist Wade Hammond (also a creation of Paul Chadwick in a long-running series), occultist Ravenwood, Stepson of Mystery (protagonist of five novelettes by top-notch pulpster Frederick C. Davis), the Moon Man (another long-running series by Davis), the mysterious Cobra (star of a short-lived series by Richard Sale, who went on to much bigger things), and high-flying pilot/detective Kerry Keen, the Griffon (from Arch Whitehouse, author of scores of aviation-related pulp yarns). That’s a pretty potent line-up of heroes to battle one guy and his minions, but as this novel slam-bangs along with almost non-stop action, the reader can’t help but wonder if even they can emerge triumphant over Doctor Death.

This is another wonderful pulp adventure from Will Murray, who’s been writing this kind of stuff for decades and does it better than anyone else. I’ve read more than half of the original Secret Agent X novels, and this is a worthy addition to the series as Murray really captures the character, although the menace X faces in this one is considerably different. I’ve also read and enjoyed many of the Wade Hammond stories. Although I’d heard of all the other characters, I hadn’t read any of their exploits, but now I think I’ll have to do that.

So if you’re a pulp fan or just want to read a well-written, strikingly bizarre adventure that barrels along full-tilt, I highly recommend SECRET AGENT X VS. DOCTOR DEATH. It’s available in e-book and paperback editions on Amazon.

And to end on a bibliographic note, Doctor Death’s original stories and novels were published by Dell, while all the other characters in this novel originally appeared in Ace Magazines.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Top-Notch Magazine, July 1, 1928

Well, that cover makes me nervous just looking at it. I don't know who painted it. There's a signature in the lower right corner, but my eyes aren't good enough to make it out. I think it's safe to say that the most well-known author in this issue of TOP-NOTCH is Erle Stanley Gardner with a story in his Speed Dash series. I haven't read any of these and don't really know anything about the character. Burt L. Standish, the author of the Frank Merriwell series, is also on hand, but he's pretty much forgotten these days, I would think. Other than that, we have George E. Powers, Seaburn Brown, Vic Whitman, Ruland V.E. Waltner, Reg Dinsmore, Harold Bradley Say, George Commodore Shinn, and William Wallace Whitelock, and I don't know a blessed thing about any of them.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Dime Western Magazine, April 1948

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, ragged edges and all. That’s one tough-lookin’ hombre on the cover! I think it was painted by Robert Stanley, but I’m not sure about that.

Walt Coburn leads off the issue, as he so often did, with a novelette called “Law of the Lawless”. The Table of Contents may refer to it as a novel, but it’s about 10,000 words, I’d say. And man, does Coburn pack a lot of back-story in those words, also as usual. Most of the story takes place at the outlaw hideout known as Hole-in-the-Wall, and it consists of tense verbal clashes between two owlhoots who share some history. There’s a neglected wife, a crippled kid, an attempted suicide, hidden loot from a bank robbery, and a sinister bounty hunter who has already wiped out all of the gang led by one of the main characters. Yeah, this is melodramatic stuff, but nobody did it better than Coburn. This suspenseful opening leads up to a couple of fine action scenes that provide a satisfying conclusion. I’ve been told that by this time in his career, the editors at Popular Publications were rewriting Coburn’s stories pretty heavily because his drinking caused him to turn in unpublishable manuscripts, and that may well be true. But the complex plot, the emotional torment some of the characters go through, and the sense of frontier authenticity are pure Coburn, as far as I can tell. It’s not a perfect story—there are a couple of continuity errors that can probably be chalked up to the above-mentioned boozing—but I loved it anyway. It’s just a real gut-punch of a hardboiled Western yarn.

As I mentioned last week, Tom W. Blackburn was a very dependable Western author. His story in this issue, “A Matter of Quick Buryin’”, is about a government investigator trying to break up a ring of thieves that’s been selling stolen horses to the army. Reluctantly, he winds up with a colorful sidekick in a drunken ex-preacher. The ending in this one seems a little rushed to me, but other than that it’s excellent and is still very good overall.

In addition to being a pulp writer, William Chamberlain was in the army and in fact had a long, successful career there, retiring as a general. So it’s not surprising that his numerous Western and adventure yarns for various pulps usually had some sort of military connection. “Mount Up, You Sons of Glory!”, his story in this issue, is a cavalry tale about a campaign against the Sioux in Dakota Territory in the dead of winter. It uses the standard plot of a new, heavy-handed commanding officer ignoring the advice of his more seasoned junior officers, but Chamberlain’s straightforward, effective prose, his sense of realism, and a very poignant ending elevate this to something more than the ordinary.

I’ve come to appreciate C. William Harrison as one of the better Western pulpsters. His short tale in this issue, “Too Tough to Tame”, is about a young man whose father was an outlaw, and when he’s unjustly accused of a crime, he decides he’ll go ahead and follow the owlhoot trail. There are a couple of twists in this one, one that I saw coming and one I didn’t, and that makes for a very good story.

When he wasn’t writing classic comic book scripts in the Forties, Gardner F. Fox was writing Westerns and science fiction stories for the pulps, just as he would soon be turning out dozens of paperback original novels during the Fifties and Sixties while continuing his comics career. “The Town That Bullets Built” in this issue is about a lawman who has retired but keeps getting drawn back into trouble. Fox was a fine storyteller and keeps this one moving along briskly with well-drawn characters until a couple of very good action scenes wrap things up and bring the story to a heartwarming and satisfying conclusion. I haven’t read that many of Fox’s Westerns, but this is certainly a good one.

Peter Dawson was one of the most dependable Western writers of the Twentieth Century. In real life, he was Jonathan Glidden, brother of Frederick Glidden, also known as highly successful Western writer Luke Short. I’d hate to have to pick between the two of them as far as which one was the better writer. The Peter Dawson novella in this issue, “Hell’s Free for Nesters!” is excellent. Against his better judgment, a drifting cowboy helps a nester girl whose wagon is stuck in a river, and that lands him in the middle of a range war, a land swindle, and a murder for which he’s blamed. Just top-notch stuff all the way around, with plenty of action, good characters, and polished writing.

Also on that list of most dependable Western writers of the Twentieth Century is Clifton Adams, who nearly always turned in really fine yarns. As an Oklahoma writer, Adams was very familiar with the oil industry there and wrote a number of stories and novels set in the early days of that business. “Boss of Purgatory’s Pipeline”, Adams’ novelette in this issue, finds a range detective becoming an oilfield detective when his client, the owner of an oil pipeline suffering from sabotage, is murdered before the protagonist even arrives on the scene. The mystery is a good one and fairly complex for a story of this length, and as always, Adams’ writing is very, very good, carrying the reader along at a swift pace. This is a terrific story.

In fact, this is a terrific issue, one of the best Western pulps I’ve ever read. If you own some issues of DIME WESTERN, I’d advise you to check your shelves for this one, because it’s definitely worth reading.