Richard S. Wheeler applies his formidable skill of combining Western historical events with fiction in THE RICHEST HILL ON EARTH, his latest stand-alone novel. Here, the story surrounds the battle for control of the rich copper mines during the early history of Wheeler’s home state of Montana.

Its city of Butte in the early 1890s may not look like much. In reality, it’s nothing more than a collection of smoky mine boilers and various shabby shacks and buildings, all darkened with air laced with soot and arsenic from the copper smelters.

But certain people know that Butte is a place to make you fortune. One such individual is John Fellows Hall, a newspaper man who arrives in Butte to edit The Butte Mineral, one of the local papers.
 
Hall’s boss is William Andrews Clark, a mining titan who owns the newspaper along with several local businesses, and has an unyielding ambition to become a U.S. Senator so as to bolster his domain. Clark’s main rival, in business and in life, is Marcus Daly, owner of the huge Anaconda Mining Company that also dominates Butte.

A former Irish immigrant, Daly remains faithful to his roots and hires most of the poor immigrants from his homeland the moment they step off the boat to work in his mines and live in his decrepit housing facilities.

But while Clark and Daly fight for power and influence, the young, college-educated Augustus Heinze uses his geological skills — and then his insight into legal tactics — to wrestle ownership and control of the mines away from both of his competitors. Soon, however, his maneuvers come to the attention of the Rockefellers and their dominating Standard Oil Company.
 
Wheeler populates his story not only with such historical figures as Clark, Daly and Heinze, but also fictional ones who populate Butte. These include Alice Brophy, the young widow of a recently killed miner who struggles to feed herself and her children. Finding little support from her husbands’ union brothers, she eventually falls under the spell of the Socialist movement and becomes “Red Alice.”

There is also Royal Maxwell, the local mortician who, while aware of the inevitability that creates the demand for his profession, still fights against the tendency of poor families burying their dead anonymously in Potter’s Field. And there is Slanting Agnes, a woman with psychic gifts who reluctantly uses her power to guide the decisions of Butte’s various small and big business owners.
 
This melding of real and fictional figures and events — portrayed in alternating chapters throughout RICHEST HILL — is wonderfully seamless. Wheeler manages to make every character as believable as those whose life and work are the stuff of history and who shaped the history of Montana.

Not surprisingly, ambition and greed are the main themes and motivating factors of Wheeler’s work and its players. It ranges from the seemingly limitless riches of the mine owners to the day-to-day battle to survive of the mine workers and other Butte residents. It all gets a bit dismal at times, and downright confusing when the author details the many complicated legal procedures Heinze used to create and then maintain his various holdings.
 
It’s also not surprising to learn that the final results of all this greed and ambition are far less than happiness and contentment. Here again, Wheeler spells out the depressing, final days of his entire cast and shows that for all their efforts they remain dim shadows of the past.
 
THE RICHEST HILL ON EARTH ironically reminds us that corporate greed and control of the government — along with the 99 percent who suffer in its wake — is by no means a contemporary phenomenon. This may not have been Wheeler’s intent, but it nonetheless adds another dimension to this fascinating if somewhat downbeat historical novel. —Alan Cranis

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I’m a fan of Westerns crossed with fantasy and horror elements. Some people salivate over cyberpunk. Some get giddy over steampunk. Me, I’m a fan of “cowpunk.” (And no, I didn’t coin that phrase. But I’ll certainly take credit if no one else will.)

Joe R. Lansdale is particularly adept at mashing the Western genre with horror, as anyone who has read his JONAH HEX stories from the ’90s can attest. Unfortunately, the filmmakers of the 2010 movie didn’t stick close to that template, deciding instead to do a mash-up of Hex with THE CROW, PUSHING DAISIES and MAXIM lingerie spreads of Megan Fox … but that’s a rant for another time.

My point is, if it’s done well, cowpunk can be a lot of fun. If it’s not done well, you get stuff that looks geared for the made-for-Syfy crowd. Edward M. Erdelac, author of the MERKABAH RIDER series, does it well. However, I must admit, initially there was trepidation on my part.

The series is about a Jewish mystic gunfighter on the trail of his former teacher turned murderous traitor, who encounters various supernatural menaces throughout the west as he struggles to catch up with his old mentor and get his revenge. It’s equal parts KUNG FU, DR. STRANGE and just about every Western ever filmed starring Clint Eastwood (but not the one where he sings).

It sounded both derivative and original at the same time, which is an entirely new mash-up all unto itself, but the thought of a Hasidic Jewish holy man traversing the saloons and brothels of the old Wild West immediately conjured up unpleasant memories of the Gene Wilder film THE FRISCO KID. Fortunately, Erdelac doesn’t play the concept for laughs.

“The Rider,” as he is simply known, is as much of a badass with firearms as he is with ancient scrolls and mystical talismans. If he can’t shoot his demonic opponents, he’s just as quick to cast a spell to stop them.

TALES OF A HIGH PLANES DRIFTER — so called for not only the homage to the Eastwood film, but also because the Rider is capable of “extraplanar travel” — is a collection of four novellas, each self-contained, but each also moving the title character’s story further along in his epic quest for revenge.

In the first novella, “Blood Libel,” the Rider comes to an Arizona mining town where violence is threatening to erupt over the disappearance of children being blamed on the Jewish population. If the Rider doesn’t act, many innocents will die.

There’s a cool dual plotline as the Rider must battle demonic minions on the spiritual plane while his unguarded body is at the mercy of a lynch mob.

In “The Dust Devils,” the Rider discovers a town surrounded by a deadly dust storm and most of the inhabitants under the sway of a hypnotic sorcerer whose powers rival his own. In “Hell’s Hired Gun,” the Rider comes upon a trail of corpses leading to Medgar Tooms, a former gunfighter lost in the despair of his dead wife and child, who now has become a demonic angel of death.

Finally, in “The Nightjar Women,” we are treated to more of the Rider’s backstory and learn interesting tidbits about where his travels may ultimately lead. There’s a supernatural menace to be dealt with, of course, and a surprising alliance, but the real surprise is the hint of a romance (given the strict religious tenets he adheres to) between the Rider and an unlikely assistant.

I enjoyed each of the stories, and if I had to make a comparison to another adventurer, I would say that the Rider is reminiscent of Robert E. Howard’s Puritan hero, Solomon Kane. Like Kane, the Rider is single-minded in his quest, is devout in his religious beliefs, and is fearless in the face of an otherworldly menace.

THE MENSCH WITH NO NAME continues the Rider’s quest with four more novellas. Again, each is self-contained, but still moves the character along in an overarching story. Don’t be fooled by the punny title: These stories are just as gritty as the first volume —perhaps more so.

More backstory is revealed, along with team-ups with real figures from the American Southwest and revelations about where the Rider’s story will culminate. Erdelac is an expert at weaving historical personalities and bits of Jewish faith and folklore into his fictional universe, and yet, he never strays into didacticism.

Note: There’s a list of Jewish terms and their definitions in the back of each volume, but the stories are easily enjoyed without constantly flipping to the back of the book. I looked up words more out of curiosity rather than necessity.

Sure, there are instances where the Rider falls too easily into an obvious trap, and more than once is able to escape certain death by pure luck and outrageous coincidence. But you’re not supposed to read these stories for a true account of life on the Western frontier, much the same way that you don’t read Howard for a realistic look at a 16th-century Puritan. You read it for the pure pulpy goodness of an action story featuring a hero unafflicted with fear and self-doubt, women who are beautiful or dangerous (and usually both), and villains straight from the fiery pits of Hell.

THE MERKABAH RIDER is published by Damnation Books, and I see that a third volume of stories, HAVE GLYPHS WILL TRAVEL, is now available. I definitely will have to see where Erdalac takes his unlikely Western hero … and there’s no greater compliment I can pay a fellow writer than that.

Mazel tov! —Slade Grayson

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THE BADGER’S REVENGE, the third entry of Larry D. Sweazy’s Josiah Wolfe series, builds upon its preceding books. Wolfe is a no-nonsense Texas Ranger who is on the hunt for an Indian raiding party, but things change rather quickly when two Comanche scouts take him and his party as prisoners.

That does not sit right with our hero, since on most accounts, Comanches take no prisoners and would have easily scalped these men and left them for dead. It becomes apparent that these scouts have plans for Wolfe: collecting a bounty on his head, as a gang leader Wolfe has a history with wants to exact revenge.

He’s the Badger of the title, aka Liam O’Reilly. Wolfe is taken to a town where the sheriff is pretty much a figurehead, and O’Reilly seems to be the one pulling the strings. “Out of the frying pan, into the fire” is the best way to describe what comes next for Wolfe. While escaping, he kills a man who turns out to be part of the law.

The story moves into some soap-opera aspects, but with darker tones, since it’s set up that one of Wolfe compatriots has his eyes on a woman that Wolfe also sees a future with. (In the previous novels, Wolfe’s wife passed away, leaving him to raise their son on his own.)

Sweazy uses these aspects to build upon the continuity of the series, while also using some slight mystery aspects that are well hidden throughout. It would be easy to spoil certain aspects of THE BADGER’S REVENGE, but that would ruin this fine entry to a great Western series. Sweazy also does a great thing by leaving certain threads open for the following novel. Wherever he goes, I’m on board, through thick and thin. —Bruce Grossman

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Wayne D. Overholser, who passed away in 1996, was a charter member of the Western Writers of America and won a Spur Award the first year they were given out, in 1953, as Lee Leighton. He would go on to win two more Spurs and be awarded the Saddleman Award for lifetime achievement in 1989. Five Star has released BEYOND THE LAW, a duo of novels that includes SHADOW OF A LOBO, introducing a new audience to Overholser’s writing.

In SHADOW, he tackles a familiar Western novel about the abuse of power in a small town, but adds some nice twists. Cliff Jenson always wanted to be a rancher, but instead, started a mercantile. There are two mercantile stores in town, so there’s competition, and a toll road that runs in and out of the valley. When a new banker comes to town and gives Jenson the choice to be a rancher or close the store, Jenson decides to do whatever it takes to keep his store, especially after the toll road owner disappears, and supplies become even harder to come by.

It seems the banker is serious about taking control of the town, and knows Jenson will stand in his way, no matter what. The only complaint here is that the story runs 55 pages, and could have been longer. The characters are strong, and the period perfectly portrayed.

BEYOND THE LAW is another ranch novel. This one features Sherman Rawls, who owns a big parcel of land in the Red Rock Mesa area. Rawls is also the law. He hangs a man, Billy Combs, for being a horse thief, but is most likely acting out of jealousy, since the man was paying undo attention to Rawls’ beautiful wife. But Combs has a wife, too, and she vows revenge on Rawls. What comes next is a tale of revenge, mixed emotions and love on the range, all added in with a hired gunfighter with trouble of his own. This novel is the stronger of the two, and offers the Western reader some fine hours of entertainment.

This collection offers a good introduction to one of the forbearers of modern Western writing, and longtime fans a chance to get reacquainted. —Larry D. Sweazy

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In the 1980s, Guinness listed Lauran Paine as the most prolific writer in the world. Whether that is a good thing or not is up to the reader to decide. But when most people think of Western writers of the early generation, Paine is probably not the first name to come to one’s mind. he started writing short stories for the pulps and slick magazines in the ’30s and ’40s, then graduated to novels. The re-release of Paine’s long list of publications may change that.

IRON MARSHAL is billed as a duo, a standard format from Five Star. Its first novel, LOST VALLEY, tackles a generational ranch tale with all of the expected characters and tropes. A good-natured sheriff who must defend a homesteader on the land that is completely owned by the Hyland family, but hard to prove. Growth and progress are the evils here, fought by men determined to stay on land they believe is theirs, and the conclusion will come as no surprise.

IRON MARSHAL concerns marshal Texas Jim Collins, who has kept the peace in Anza County, N.M., for 25 years. Another ranch tale ensues here, as the most powerful rancher around, John Setter, is convinced Texas Jim’s best days are behind him, and should retire. Setter looks to a stranger to force Texas Jim out of office, but the plan backfires, and the marshal hires the stranger as his deputy, setting the stage for a showdown that is pretty much telegraphed from the beginning.

Neither tale brings anything new to the table, but they are both solid reads, and provide an informative experience of a western writer of another age. Traditionalists will enjoy this pair of novels. —Larry D. Sweazy

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Rancher Dan Sanson had experienced a lot of tragedy; the death of his wife and a good chunk of his herd had died the summer before to a mysterious sickness, but he was determined to continue on and make go of the ranch. Bad thing for Sanson is that he owned the water rights in between two powerful ranches — and it appears, at the beginning of Terrell L. Bowers’ THE SWITCHBACK TRAIL, to have cost him his life.

On top of Sanson’s murder, add in an arranged marriage between the two ranches, both in financial trouble, a ranch hand who may be more or less than he pretends, a kidnapping for ransom, and a pair of despicable hired guns, and you have a familiar, traditional Western that, in the end, is a highly entertaining read.

What stands out about this latest effort from veteran Western writer Bowers is the smooth writing, steady pacing and interesting, well-defined characters. There was not one jarring moment to be had. This is the kind of book that is always handy to have in the cabin on a cold winter night, sitting in front of the fire, and allowing yourself to be transported to another time and world, where the bad guys are bad, the good guys good, and the end is as satisfying as the beginning. —Larry D. Sweazy

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Saddle up, buckaroos! Time to hit the trail again. This week’s entries of moldy oldies feature three Westerns, all completely new to these eyes. We have two series and one standalone. Hopefully, they’ll provide some good ol’ fashioned Western fun.

BIBLES, BULLETS AND BRIDES by J.D. Hardin — Yes, the main reason I picked up this 1983 book was for the title alone. I have never come across this series before. First things first: Hardin is a pseudonym for Donald Bain, a ghostwriter responsible for the MURDER, SHE WROTE books and the COFFEE, TEA, OR ME series. This one is in the same vein as other adult Westerns such as LONGARM and THE GUNSMITH, here with Raider, a hero with a libido the size of Texas.

Raider’s latest assignment for the Pinkertons is taking cargo to Utah. Since he arrives so late to start, he has no idea what the cargo actually is. He’s also saddled with an older woman who’s a Calamity Jane type. It’s not until they need to settle down for the first night that Raider discovers what they’re carrying: a set of mail-order brides on their way to be married to a man in Utah.

The rest of the story is pretty by-the-numbers, with some action to be expected. First, you have Raider figuring he can spend time with the virginal brides. Then, it’s the long haul to Utah, with episodes of Indians and bandits. Nothing really new to the genre, but there’s enough sex to keep longtime readers happy.

But it tested my patience. I could have easily picked up another adult Western and had more fun and less drag. That’s what really killed this book for me. It read slower then a mule crossing the Great Plains. Sometimes, you’re better off sticking to series you know won’t disappoint. Maybe other books in the series are better, but for now, I’ll pass.

HERNE THE HUNTER #4: SHADOW OF THE VULTURE by John J. McLaglen — Taking a page from EDGE, we have another Western hero who’s super-violent and over-the-top. This series was the creation of two British authors, John Harvey and Laurence James, who give their hero a complete backstory that the series relies on for the early adventures. From reading this 1977 entry, it seems the first three books in the series dealt with Herne tracking down the seven men who brutally raped his wife and left her for dead.

Again, nothing new for the genre. Herne is like a mean-streak Clint Eastwood. You could call this one the final chapter in his whole origin tale, since it centers on him tracking down one final man to kill. His target was not one of the not-magnificent seven, but the father of one of the slain men. He’s also a U.S. senator who has sent countless men to track down and kill Herne.

Unlike the previous novel, this one fires on all cylinders to a brutal end. In its short length, plenty of action is thrown your way, from card-game shootouts to towns with names that are the complete opposite from how its people act. All the while, Herne tries to do the right thing and help out the less fortunate. That’s really the whole story in a nutshell. Since this series appears to have been published only overseas, it might be hard to come by, but is worth the hunt.

THE MAN FROM YUMA by Hal G. Evarts — This 1958 novel falls into the old-school “good guys and bad guys” type of Western. The storyline might be original for its time, but it really does come down to the good guys always winning in the end. Sorry to ruin the book, folks.

Former Confederate soldier John Hazard is hand-picked by the U.S. Army to infiltrate a group of military deserters who are robbing payrolls and leaving dead bodies in their wake. Hazard uses the cover of a disgraced Army colonel who has also run from the service for shooting a fellow officer. He has to do whatever he can to make sure the cover sticks, so he can get enough information to relay back to the Army.

The typical, “prove yourself in the gang” angle has been done before in countless books and movies. What I liked is that Hazard admits he is not some crack shot, but an expert with knives, to the point he wants one of the gang members to hold a card in his teeth. Throw in a young woman whose father is mixed into this mess and you have yourself a pleasant little read.

Evarts wrote a plethora of Westerns in his time, but this is the first I’ve ever come across. And this one has been sitting on my shelf since this column’s inception, 215 installments ago. It definitely filled my need for an oater that simply entertained and never dragged. —Bruce Grossman

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Phil Dunlap’s AMBUSH CREEK reads like a return to the Golden Age of Western fiction. His straightforward writing style is reminiscent of Lauran Paine or Luke Short. The story starts in Cochise, Arizona Territory, in 1880. The local sheriff, John Henry Stevens, encounters three bounty hunters, who look like they’ve fallen on the bad side of the coin.

The three leave town, but not before raising the sheriff’s suspicions about their ultimate destination and purpose. When U.S. Marshal Piedmont Kelly arrives in Cochise, the sheriff asks him to check up on the bounty hunters. What Kelly finds begins the start of a hunt that takes the marshal back to Desert Belle, the location of Dunlap’s first novel, THE DEATH OF DESERT BELLE, where Kelly nearly lost his life. Marshal Kelly is aided by Spotted Dog, a Chiricahua Apache and tracker, whose life he once saved.

As much a mystery as a Western, AMBUSH CREEK has Kelly unravel a tangle of lies, and dodge constant danger that involves an errant $50,000, the survival of the Gilded Lily Mine, and a few old friends in need of rescue. The fourth novel to feature Kelly, AMBUSH CREEK is tightly plotted with familiar and likable characters. Fans of traditional Westerns should find this an entertaining read. —Larry D. Sweazy

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A writer of more than 40 short stories, THE RATTLESNAKE SEASON is the first full-length novel from Larry D. Sweazy. It’s also the starting point to a new character in former Texas Ranger Josiah Wolfe.

At the start of the book, we find Wolfe mourning for his wife, who died giving birth to his son, and also his daughter, who died from sickness. As you can see, this is not your slam-bang Western that’s an excuse to pepper in gratuitous sex and violence. The story is based on that tried-and-true idea of bringing a prisoner to trial, which is nothing new, but what is different is how Sweazy tells it: with amazing character development throughout to keep readers engaged.

These are not the one-note characters you might expect in most Westerns, but fully drawn-out and complex personalities, with Wolfe really having to come to terms with his former life as a Texas Ranger. Add in the fact that the prisoner in question is a former associate and action pieces with enough bloodshed, and they’ll keep a Western fan wanting more.

It all builds to a climax which, for me, was a little lacking. In essence, the ending is a more of a fizzle. Still, Sweazy shows signs of some unbridled Western talent, which hopefully grows in the second book of the series, THE SCORPION TRAIL. —Bruce Grossman

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Last year, the Western Writers of America held their annual convention in Oklahoma City, and I had the real pleasure of interviewing several of the members for a book-chat TV show seen in central Oklahoma. I was honored that Loren D. Estleman took a few minutes to talk with me about what was then his latest book, THE BRANCH AND THE SCAFFOLD. At the end of the interview, we slipped in mention of the author’s Western series character, U.S. Marshal Page Murdock.

THE BOOK OF MURDOCK is our first visit with the marshal since PORT HAZARD six years ago, and the lawman is back in fine style. He’s been forced to work undercover before, but never like this. His boss, Judge Harlan A. Blackthorne, tells him to turn his collar around and become an evangelical preacher. “How much do you know about the Bible?” Blackthorne asks him. “It’s black, isn’t it?” Murdock shoots back.

It seems that there’s a gang of thieves and robbers down in the Texas panhandle, a place with which the marshal is in no hurry to reconnect. About the panhandle, he tells us, “No other spot on the map was better named, with the possible exception of the Dead Sea.” Blackthorne wants the nest of vipers eliminated and is certain that a disguise will be necessary to keep his agent safe.

On Murdock’s team below the Red River is an aging, but still tack-sharp Texas Ranger captain named Andrew Jackson Jordan. He’s one Jordan you wouldn’t want to cross. The scene in which the Ranger meets the man who brought “Brother Bernard” to town — Richard Freemason — borders on farce. Freemason knows Brother Bernard is really Page Murdock, Jordan knows Bernard is Murdock, but Murdock doesn’t want Freemason to know that Jordan knows.

“It was an experience new to me, that moment: Two men working overtime to keep a third from knowing the full truth about one of them while the third pretended not to know it already. The frontier was no longer the simple place it used to be.”

And lest you think that Estleman the juggler can keep only three balls in the air, Freemason’s wife is an old frenemy of Murdock’s who thinks the marshal is on Richard’s tail because he once got into legal trouble with Judge Blackthorne.

Now close your books and take out a piece of paper. There will be a pop quiz.

None of this is as complicated as it sounds when you read the book. The characters are too well-delineated for confusion. They don’t sound alike when they talk and their personal concerns are very different. Estleman, who has written more detective stories than Westerns, is an old hand at keeping the varying plot strands from getting knotted up while the story moves along.

And, as always with Estleman, there are delicious little moments in the dialogue and descriptions that make you stop and smile. On how a man of the cloth should act at the dinner table of a parishioner: “Eat with your fingers if they eat with theirs and … don’t let anyone see you pluck stray hairs from your food.”

Describing the defrocked priest who is teaching Murdock the ways of the lordly: “He touched on human whenever his wife was in the room. The rest of the time he was a slot machine that paid out in Scripture.”

On the Godliness of Texas Rangers: “I ain’t what you might call a religious man. The evidence of things unseen don’t hold up in San Antonio.”

I think you’ll have fun with this one. I know I did. —Doug Bentin

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• AMERICAN DETECTIVE by Loren D. Estleman
• THE BRANCH AND THE SCAFFOLD: THE TRUE STORY OF THE WEST’S LEGENDARY HANGING JUDGE by Loren D. Estleman
• FRAMES by Loren D. Estleman
• PEEPER by Loren D. Estleman

Clint Eastwood considers Josey Wales to be his career high point in the Western genre. He’s also the quasi-cover star to the reissue of the film‘s source material, Forrest Carter’s THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES. If you’re only familiar with the movie, you are in for a treat, since the book is more a slow-burn character study, with the violence you remember being not in the same vein.

Josey Wales is a farmer whose life takes a major shift when a group of Union soldiers not only destroy his home, but brutally rape his wife, who is then killed, as well as his child. This forces Wales to swear utter vengeance on the men who did it, to the point he signs up with a Confederate outfit who are a sort of guerilla squad.

The story then moves ahead in time, with Wales being a wanted man for his actions since the Civil War has been over. But nothing will change his lifestyle and he continues in the way he only knows how, trusting only himself, until he meets up with an Indian named Lone who also has seen the bad side of the U.S. government. These two form a bond and come to rely on each other.

Wales won’t surrender, no matter what is thrown his way. He is a man whose life can’t rest until he gets his vengeance. This is not the typical action-fest most people will expect; even the moments of violence are brief and never glorified. You can see how Eastwood was affected by reading this book, since he took certain ideas and used them much later in UNFORGIVEN.

THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES is a classic of modern literature that is a must-read for any Western fan. Carter’s style is very much full of “you are there” atmosphere, using Western dialect in dialogue that takes a little getting used to, but reeks of a certain authenticity. It should be noted that Carter is a pseudonym for Asa Earl Carter, whose background as a speechwriter for George Wallace and former Ku Klux Klan member may come as a surprise to some, especially since he tried really hard to keep these two names separate (and for good reason). Still, it’s not his beliefs that should be remembered, but his writing of a masterpiece. —Bruce Grossman

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One of the few authors still writing for the Western genre today is Robert J. Randisi. It always brightens my reading pile when I see a new title from him. GALLOWS is no different, and Randisi likes to get right into the action.

It opens with a drifter named Lancaster looking for water for his horse, but steps into a whole hornets’ nest of trouble. He finds water, but it’s located on someone’s property, so he knows he needs to ask permission first. When he heads to the homestead to do so, he finds three men dragging a woman by her hair and beating on her. He tries to avoid confrontation, but the men threaten him while they keep beating on her at the same time.

Lancaster tries to do right, but it ends up in a one-sided gunfight. Being a former killer for hire, he comes through slightly unscathed, in that the men shot his horse, which was the reason for his actions. This all happens within the first few pages, and GALLOWS never lets up.

Inside the house, Lancaster discovers another dead body: the husband of the battered woman. But it’s not until he hits town the real trouble starts. Not only does the woman claim she shot her husband, but that the three men were the dead man’s brothers and they’re all related to the town judge, who seems calm and collected, but also vindictive.

Now, if you’re expecting some tried-and-true, “good guys vs. bad guys” formula of Westerns, go watch a Gene Autry film. Randisi has been writing these long enough to know how to throw in a few spurs and tumbleweeds to gum up the works. He balances the plot with a variety of characters who add to the nonstop tension. The story itself is like a slow-simmerin’ pot of chili that can turn deadly at a moment’s notice, especially as we get a better picture of the judge and his sons.

To go further surely would be a disservice to GALLOWS. It’s a nice take on the Western genre, which needs more writers like Randisi, an original voice who’s still going strong. —Bruce Grossman

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• DOUBLE THE BOUNTY by Robert J. Randisi
• THE GUNSMITH #85: WINNER TAKE ALL by J.R. Roberts
• THE LAWMAN by Robert J. Randisi
• LONE STAR LAW edited by Robert J. Randisi
• THE GUNSMITH #23: THE RIVERBOAT GANG by Robert J. Randisi
• THE GUNSMITH #44: THE SCARLET GUN by Robert J. Randisi
• THE GUNSMITH #128: THE CALIENTE GOLD ROBBERY by Robert J. Randisi
• THE PICASSO FLOP by Vince Van Patten and Robert J. Randisi
• SHELTER #2: HANGING MOON by Robert J. Randisi

THE PLAINS OF LARAMIE is another collection of old pulp Western stories reprinted for new audiences. Not being familiar at all with the writing of Lauran Paine, I had no idea what to expect. But I did see OPEN RANGE, which was based on his book, and that was one of those sleeper Westerns.

This rounds up two short stories and a novella, from which the title takes its name. The opening story, “Boothill’s Ferryman,” deals with a ferry owner who raises his prices, irking the townsfolk. But it also deals with the local sheriff, Jack Masters. For such a short story, it’s definitely packed with action that surpassed my expectations. It also has one of those great, unexpected endings that making reading Westerns a true joy.

The second story is “Vermilion Kid.” Now, long before we ever heard the term “police procedural shows,” Paine wrote a story that could have easily fit into that category, just set in the Old West. It’s about a shooting that is solved by procedures which we take for granted today. Both stories have a type of “love can conquer all” theme, even when things don’t turn out like a Hollywood ending.

Finally, the last and longest story is the titular one, dealing with family, revenge and a cache of missing money. It follows Frank Travis, who is hunted down by a mob-like posse. He takes out one of its members, who turns out to be a sheriff. But he also gets killed himself, which brings in his brother Parker, who is out to prove his sibling’s innocence and find the real culprits.

This story is full-on action with a fantastic ending, in the sense of how Parker gets his justice. I throughly enjoyed these three brief takes of the Old West. Now I’ll have to add Paine to my list of Western authors I should look out for more. My main problem with the book is the truly lame Photoshopped cover art. How about using the old pulp covers instead, with newly redesigned text? It would grab new readers who love the retro looks of other such books. —Bruce Grossman

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Time for another column of oats-eating reading, so grab your saddlebags and bedrolls. This time out, we feature two new strangers, while the third is an old standby. In the meantime, let’s set a spell while I write an angry e-mail to DC Comics about a certain Confederate soldier’s lack of a second SHOWCASE volume. Maybe this will get it all straightened out by the time JONAH HEX hits the big screen, which has two things going for it: Josh Brolin as Jonah and Mastodon doing the soundtrack. I bet you were expecting some cheap Megan Fox joke. Sorry, buckaroos, I can’t stand that second-rate Angelina Jolie. (I’m more a Rachel Weisz man myself.)

JIM STEEL #6: AZTEC GOLD by Chet Cunningham — Wow, look at that kick-ass cover! I mean, that dude looks like a total badass who’s about to shoot first and maybe ask questions later. This 1981 book just screams “read me!” Well, I read it and guess what? An episode of GUNSMOKE is more action-packed.

This book is so boring and milquetoast, it’s amazing it made it to number six in a series. Jim Steel is a one-note character with absolutely nothing of interest to keep readers wanting more. I really was hoping for some total cool gunfighter. What I got was a hero that 8-year-olds would laugh at.

Steel is supposed to be some tough, go-to gunfighter who is hired by the president to protect an exhibit of Mexican treasures. That is the whole plot of the story. Of course, during this protection, various groups try to steal the gold. Oooh, how thrilling. It would be if Steel was not knocked out or taken by surprise at every turn. He makes the Three Stooges look like Continental Ops.

The story plods along like a horse. Too bad the horse is on the way to the glue factory. Even the addition of what should be the love interest just stands there like a wooden Indian in front of a cigar store — nice decoration, but serves no purpose whatsoever. To make matters worse is that once the gold is stolen, it’s retrieved so quickly, you get the feeling Cunningham had a certain word count to hit and once there, he just tied it all up quickly. This is a series to avoid, since it takes no time to read and probably no time to write. Look elsewhere for your Western action.

CHANCE #1 by Clay Tanner — MAVERICK on a riverboat is exactly what the CHANCE series is, with violence and a little bit of R-rated sex thrown in. Tanner is actually George W. Proctor, who wrote science fiction under his own name but used a variety of pseudonyms for Westerns.

This 1986 entry is the first in a series which finished with book 12. Many seeds are planted in this story — namely, a certain historical figure who is a friend of Chance’s and, from what I understand, pops up later. (Think riverboats and writing, and it will come to you.) Chance is a gambler who seems to be based on the old James Garner character — a likable sort who is a master at cards, to the point that after the opening game, he is attacked for the reasons of retrieving the money another card player lost.

This is nothing new for the Western genre. Still, it sets up the story when Chance, after beating up his attacker, learns the man is a former friend who fell on hard time. This is where the story is given its purpose, when it’s explained to Chance that his pal lost everything in a card game on a riverboat called the New Moon (don’t worry, folks: This has nothing to do with emo vampires and that deluded fan base), which Chance is actually about to take down to New Orleans.

Of course, he takes it upon himself to set things straight, since no one could be as good at cards the way Chance’s friend explained his misfortune. I think most people can see where this is going, and by the halfway mark, Chance has solved that problem. It’s then that the book moves into Chance having to deal with the attempts on his life and newfound winnings.

Again, this is nothing groundbreaking, but Proctor knows how to keep the reader engaged, even when most of them will have it figured out. How a gambler won would have been more of a surprise if I did not see it done on an old episode of SANFORD AND SON. Still, the story kept my attention throughout, and I will definitely be looking for more CHANCE adventures in the future.

EDGE #7: CALIFORNIA KILL by George G. Gilman — Yippie-ki-yi-yeah! The baddest hombre is back in BOOKGASM territory! I’m talking about the man who makes Bill Belichick look like a barrel of laughs: none other than Edge. For those unfamiliar with this character, he was in the Civil War, is a bit bitter about it all, and carries a straight razor in his collar for his go-to weapon.

The bulk of the 1973 story takes place in a California town with no name. The town is literally being run roughshod over by bandits and a sheriff who is more concerned with making a profit than keeping the law. See, Edge stumbled upon a stagecoach being robbed and tried to help. But things take a nasty turn, making Edge super-pissed off. He even makes up a lie about the robbery, since one of the passengers is a photographer, and tells everyone that the photographer took a photo of the crime and will use it for evidence. So, of course, the bad guys want the photo back.

Of course, there is no photo — this is just Edge setting bait in his trap. For readers of the series, it’s more of the violent same, which is exactly why I keep going back to it … with a breather, though, since a little can go long way. Still, I’ll take an EDGE book over whatever crap Hollywood dishes out.

Next time: “Jack”-o’-Lantern and friends. —Bruce Grossman

Buy them at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF GEORGE G. GILMAN:
• ADAM STEELE #1: REBELS AND ASSASSINS DIE HARD by George G. Gilman
• EDGE #2: TEN GRAND by George G. Gilman
• EDGE #4: KILLER’S BREED by George G. Gilman
• EDGE #6: RED RIVER by George G. Gilman
• EDGE #11: SIOUX UPRISING by George G. Gilman
• EDGE #15: PARADISE LOSES by George G. Gilman
• STEELE #17: SATAN’S DAUGHTERS by George G. Gilman

Although pulp as a format may be long gone, pulp as a genre will never die … at least as long as it continues to be cared for, in good hands like those of Joe R. Lansdale and Keith Lansdale. The father/son team has a strong hold of the editing reins of Subterranean Press’ SON OF RETRO PULP TALES, a sequel to the 2006 original.

‘Tis fitting the elder Lansdale open the collection of 11 stories, covering everything from Westerns and jungle exploits to cold-blooded revengers. His “The Crawling Eye” is the weirdest — and arguably the best — of them all, with a well-armed reverend befriending a presumed half-wit kept caged in the aptly named town of Wood Tick. Involving rancid horsemeat and dimension-hopping monsters, it’s a joy to read, with dialogue as brisk as it is biting.

Christopher Golden goes soft on us — in a good way — with “Quiet Bullets,” a kindhearted ghost story (no, such a thing is not an oxymoron) about a fatherless, poor boy who finds the spirit of a cowboy haunting his home. It’s a sad tribute to how little a kid can feel in such a big, bad world.

David J. Schow’s “A Gunfight” is just that, and a tribute to Donald E. Westlake’s Parker character. It’s a post-robbery exchange of bullets in a cheap hotel, with $119,000 up for grabs. Using only two or three lines of dialogue, it’s all action, all the time, sporting a narrative simplicity that cuts right to the chase: “Some guys had tried to kill Proctor and Proctor had killed some guys.” What more motivation do you require?

From the get-go, William F. Nolan earned my good graces by giving the single mom at the crux of “The Perfect Nanny” a job at the late, great Whitman Comics — purveyor of many a dog-eared Disney comic of my childhood. Then he surpasses it by delivering an electrifying story of old-school possession that recalls the similarly fun Sam Raimi film DRAG ME TO HELL.

What to do with a box you’ve been told can never be opened, lest it have devastating consequences, and you have no idea what’s inside? I don’t know. But you’d certainly be driven mad, as those unfortunate souls in Cherie Priest’s beguiling “The Catastrophe Box” do. To her credit, she eventually shows you its mysterious contents, and the reveal is worth the wait and worry.

Keying off a real-life event in which African-American boxer Joe Louis defeated German boxer Max Schmeling in 1938, Matt Venne imagines what happened after the momentous event, in “The Brown Bomber and the Nazi Werewolves of the S.S.” As the title teases, embarrassed Nazis throw Louis into a castle’s pit, where he’s forced to fight a lycanthrope in a makeshift barbed-wire ring. Yes, it’s just as much fun as it sounds.

Trying to one-up Venne in the crazed-title department is Harlan Ellison, turning in “The Toad Prince or, Sex Queen of the Martian Pleasure-Domes.” As promised, its protagonist is Sarna, a prostitute on Mars, imported from Earth. Just before one of her would-be johns is murdered, he leaves Sarna a talking “alien frog-thing” known as “the Six.” The creature needs to find its five brothers; together, they comprise an all-knowing lifeform of considerable power.

As a sci-fi satire, Ellison’s story isn’t entirely successful, but its ending sure pays off, and it’s firmly entrenched in the ol’ pulp spirit. And in an anthology like this, that’s all that matters. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Subterranean Press or Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF JOE R. LANSDALE:
• BAD CHILI by Joe R. Lansdale
• LEATHER MAIDEN by Joe R. Lansdale
• MUCHO MOJO by Joe R. Lansdale
• RETRO PULP TALES edited by Joe R. Lansdale
• SANCTIFIED AND CHICKEN-FRIED: THE PORTABLE LANSDALE by Joe R. Lansdale
• SAVAGE SEASON by Joe R. Lansdale
• THE TWO-BEAR MAMBO by Joe R. Lansdale
• VANILLA RIDE by Joe R. Lansdale

Scouring out the weekly singles scene … in comics!

In THOR GOD-SIZE SPECIAL #1, a burly gent named Skurge the Executioner is killed in battle. Afterward, everyone — Thor included — has a different memory of him, thanks to the mind-altering doings of a trickster. Thor and his pals aim to restore his true reputation, and doing so requires fighting some giant beasts. Matt Fraction’s story is told in four parts, with each tackled by a different artist. This allows for styles that vary from painted to classic comics, but by far, Mike and Laura Allred’s unmistakable approach is the one that pops with color and life. A 1985 issue of THE MIGHTY THOR featuring Skurge fills the back half of the book, and it’s an epic fantasy as only Walter Simonson could do them.

For a buck, you can get a look of some of IDW’s upcoming slate with IDW COMING ATTRACTIONS #1, fronted by Darwyn Cooke’s acclaimed RICHARD STARK’S PARKER: THE HUNTER. It’s a multipage excerpt, but others get only one or two, or maybe just an ad, including new titles OXIDO, the zombie-centric THE LAST RESORT and WE WILL BURY YOU, the next series of Joe Hill’s LOCKE & KEY, and VITRIOL THE HUNTER, among others. On the flipside, peek into IDW’s reprint books, such as Dave Stevens’ classic ROCKETEER and Michael Kaluta’s STARSTRUCK. Many would argue previews should be free, and if this weren’t printed on super-high-quality pages, I’d agree. But you can part with 100 pennies for this one.

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #600 isn’t just a celebration of reaching a numerical milestone, but of the entire series’ characters and mythology. It’s a giant issue, and the lead story details Spidey trying to stop Doctor Octopus from destroying New York on the same day that Aunt May is due to marry J. Jonah Jameson’s father. Brace yourself for a surprise ending. There are four backup short stories, most notably a Stan Lee-penned affair in which Spider-Man visits a psychiatrist, allowing Lee to go to town poking fun at 47 years’ worth of stories. Another is Mark Waid’s Uncle Ben tale that might bring tears to your eyes. Scattered throughout are some amusing “Covers You’ll Never See!” This one’s a party, people.

A Western character from Marvel’s yesteryear is revived in KID COLT #1. The titular teenage antihero is Blaine Cole, who was forced to become an outlaw when a corrupt sheriff had his family murdered over their land. The law is looking for Cole because of a farmer he’s supposed to have shot, but he claims his innocence. A bounty hunter tells him finding an eyewitness might help his case, so that’s exactly what he tries to do. Unfortunately, everywhere he goes, people are trying to kill him or capture him. Guns a-blazin’ in this four-chapter tale — originally a webcomic — written by Tom DeFalco and drawn by Rick Burchett. Western comics aren’t exactly a dime a dozen these days, so when they do come out, you should snap them up.

Del Rey Comics’ THE TALISMAN #0 provides a peek into its eagerly awaited title — its first for the label — and one that adapts the Stephen King/Peter Straub bestseller of the ’80s, of course. Doing the duties are Robin Furth with the words, and Tony Shasteen with the pictures. But while the latter’s work comes through loud and clear, the former’s does not. I know that only 17 pages’ worth of story, it’s bound to be a tease, but I couldn’t comprehend just what was going on — and I read the book when it first came out (granted, I’ve slept since then). It involves a boy named Jack, his dad, dimension-hopping, hunting accidents and a goat monster. At least I think. Hopefully, the threads of the fantasy will make much more sense as the series gets underway in November.

Fan-favorite writer J. Michael Straczynski is updating a quartet of superheroes that were once under the Archie Comics family of the 1940s, in a series of one-shots. First up is THE RED CIRCLE: THE HANGMAN #1, and it tells the story of Dr. Dickering, who unwillingly inherits a Civil War-era curse that has him become the titular terror — a masked, immortal man who gets to decide who’s guilty and who’s innocent. If they’re innocent, he fights to protect them. If they’re not … well, that’s obviously the fun part. You can’t go wrong with vigilante justice, and Straczynski gets this reboot off to a rousing start, complemented by Tom Derenick’s pencils and Bill Sienkiewicz’s color. If you’re into THE PUNISHER, odds are you’ll like this. —Rod Lott

We all know the A-listers of Old West bad men and their pursuers: Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickock — one bloodstain after another. Less familiar but no less fascinating are the reprobates whose stories are told by five-time Spur Award winner Loren D. Estleman in THE BRANCH AND THE SCAFFOLD: THE TRUE STORY OF THE WEST’S LEGENDARY HANGING JUDGE, about Isaac Parker of Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Parker believed that executions should be public — not to provide entertainment, but to teach a moral lesson. Murderers and rapists should receive in a public display the wages of their sins. With hangman George Maledon as the man with the rope, and deputies of the caliber of “The Three Guardsmen” — Bill Tilghman, Chris Madsen and Heck Thomas —the Hanging Judge was ready to get to work.

Parker’s men are described by the characteristics they lack: “I don’t want drunks and gamblers like that preening man Hickok, or bush-whackers like the gang in Dodge City. Such men are timid when they become separated from the pack. Pin that star on men of swift judgment and good instincts.”

Work for Parker was made up of holding court six days a week, for up to 10 hours a day. In 21 years as the judge presiding over the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas, Parker sentenced 156 men and four women to death by hanging. Only 79 eventually dangled from one of the six nooses — “Parker’s Tears” — for which Maledon cared.

Estleman introduces us to Parker and his wife, who baked cakes for the prisoners, but the bulk of the book is taken up by stories of pursuit and capture. The main attractions are Ned Christie, Cherokee Bill and Belle Starr. About Starr, Estleman writes: “Most of what was written about the West was rubbish, and more rubbish was written about Myra Belle Shirley from Arkansas than about Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and Buffalo Bill Cody combined. The process by which a lank-limbed, crab-ridden consort of bushwhackers with a face like a log butt made the long climb from the brothels of Carthage, Missouri, to be coronated the Bandit Queen of the Border said more about the hacks who performed the ceremony than it did about their subject.”

Estleman is not a romancer. About Cherokee Bill’s traveling companions he writes: “Cherokee Bill had slain a man at a dance over some little, and ‘lit a shuck’ toward the outlaw life with the Cooks, as stupid a pair of brothers as had ever taken to the outlaw trail, although he’d admired the viciousness of their dedication.”

But it isn’t just the villains who lead a hard life. Manhunting was not romantic, and it sure as hell wasn’t comfortable. “No matter how reliable a man’s umbrella, when it rained he got wet. At times he seemed to be hauling the downpour with him, as if it came from a nozzle that followed his progress, a moving spout surrounded by dry. When he camped he made a shelter of the slicker with cottonwood branches, wrung out his socks, and slept until he was awakened by his own misery.”

The prose is a wonderfully readable combination of Estleman’s poetics and Mark Twain-like sarcasm. For instance, murderer and thief Bill Dalton is called a “reformed politician.”

And the book’s title? Well, if you’re hanged from a branch, you’re the victim of vigilantes, and that’s bad. If you’re hanged from a scaffold, then the law got you, and that’s good. Just a distinction to keep in mind when you find a rope around your neck and you’re looking for something uplifting. —Doug Bentin

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• AMERICAN DETECTIVE by Loren D. Estleman
• FRAMES by Loren D. Estleman
• PEEPER by Loren D. Estleman

After hearing for years and years about how great the comic-book creative team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby was, I finally “get it.” All it took was reading the pair’s THE BEST OF SIMON AND KIRBY, a fabulous hardcover collection from Titan Books.

Sure, I’ve read their stuff plenty times before, but as a kid, I was unaware of things like “writers” and “artists.” And anything in adulthood has primarily been their superhero stuff, which as it turns out, is their least dynamic genre. This book offers several examples from that subject, as well as sci-fi, war, romance, crime, Western, horror and even humor.

Each section is prefaced by an excellent introduction by Mark Evanier, placing the stories that follow into historical context and discussing what worked and what didn’t, both creatively and commercially. These are quite helpful, pointing out nuances and nuttiness that you might not pick up on otherwise.

This being from Titan, you’d expect it not to feature any Marvel or DC material, but lo and behold, it does, with a story each featuring Captain America (their most popular creation) and The Sandman. More interesting to me were their lesser-known heroes, primarily for the reason of being comparatively unheralded, including The Fly and Stuntman. Blue Bolt also qualifies, and he’s featured in the science-fiction section, which also boasts the story with the tee-hee title of “The Tree Men of Uranus.”

But the Simon and Kirby touch really starts shining through on the third chapter, “War and Adventure.” There’s a bizarre, meta Boy Commandos story in which those characters are presumed dead, and Simon and Kirby pace around their office wondering just what the hell they’re going to do. Much more serious is “My City Is No More,” is sobering tale of nuclear apocalypse that first plays like an innocent caper before taking a hard right.

Their romance stuff is a hoot, which shouldn’t come as a surprise, since they invented the genre in its illustrated form. Pay particular attention to “The Savage in Me!” for its political incorrectness: Its blonde beauty of a protagonist is practically raped by some egotistical military guy she’s just met. Not only does she falls for him, but surrenders her identity — when she finally gives in, he calls her by name, only to be corrected: “No, Donovan — your woman!” Ah, young love!

Datedness also helps make the crime section a blast, with a chump in the proto-CSI tale “Trapping New England’s Chain Murderer” spilling all to the cops because his addiction has broken him down: “I … need a marijuana! I gotta have a reefer! Okay! I’ll talk! Only give me a smoke or I’ll go bats!!” Other crime tales tell the true stories of Ma Barker and Scarface.

Their Western stuff is wonderfully colorful, and the best of the lot here features a do-gooder character named Bulls Eye, who deserved a longer life than he got. Horror is next, with typical fright tales of the period, but it’s worth noting that Simon and Kirby generated many of theirs by adapting dreams sent in by readers. That may not be the best way to get a lucid script, but at least it’s different, and lets Kirby’s imagination run wild.

So-called “sick humor” finishes out the book, with half of the examples coming from Simon’s one-time MAD competitor, SICK. Humor clearly wasn’t their forte, although you can tell they had fun doing it. The most successful story here is a “20,000 Lugs Under the Sea” movie parody; an Archie-style “Rainy Day with House-Date Harry” story is cute, but pointless. And then there’s a spread of illustrated Lenny Bruce jokes — I hate to shoot at sacred cows, but if this represents the best Bruce gave, he’s woefully overrated.

The boys clearly brought the best out of each other, with Simon scripts that generally were economical in terms of dialogue, thus allowing Kirby to let visuals do some of the talking, thus granting the entire thing a fluidity that one rarely sees in today’s mythos-heavy, continuity-complicated illustrated fiction.

This represents the first of a series for Titan, with subsequent volumes to zero in on several of the individual genres whose surfaces are merely scratched here. Based upon that initial taste, they all look like keepers. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

The more you know about H.P. Lovecraft, the more you’re apt to enjoy CTHULHU UNBOUND, a Permuted Press anthology of “genre-bending tales” involving the author’s vast mythology. Edited by Thomas Brannan and John Sunseri, the collection features 15 stories in a variety of genres, but if you don’t know your Shub-Niggurath from Nyarlathotep, I’m afraid you’ll be mostly lost.

The book’s inventiveness is evident from the start, as Linda L. Donahue’s opening story is a noir detective tale, albeit one with a protagonist who has cloven hooves. Things get more English and proper for Kevin Lauderdale’s “James and the Dark Grimoire,” in which one Aunt Agnes of the Ladies Auxiliary seeks a rare book she thinks is called something like “the Nickel Norman Chrome.”

Doug Goodman puts a Western coat on things with “Hellstone and Brimfire,” featuring a hero called the Dead Ranger, who needs to carry no guns, so long as the stars above are with him. Kim Paffenroth has one of the most clever pieces, reimagining a chapter of MOBY-DICK to include the fishmen of “Dagon.”

“The Hindenburg Manifesto” by Lee Clark Zumpe involves Nazis, the occult and one famous flaming dirigible. Another tragedy — 9/11 — informs Steven Michael Graham’s “In Our Darkest Hour,” in which scientists investigate rumors of the Eye of Eternal Night being found among the World Trade Center debris. Permuted Press regular D.L. Snell again plays around in post-apocalyptic times with “Blood Bags and Tentacles,” in which well-armed survivors encounter something with many arms.

In Ben Thomas’ “The Menagerie,” a prince wishes to acquire a Shoggoth for his collection of beasts, and C.J. Henderson delves into the disappearance of a doctor behind closed doors for a “Locked Room” mystery. I was familiar with very few of these writers, so it would have been nice for Brannan and Sunseri to allow room for author bios, not to mention an introduction to the entire volume; as is, they put no personal stamp on the contents.

All in all, UNBOUND is a mixed bag. Its enjoyment for the average reader would be heightened if the stories didn’t assume an already advanced knowledge of Lovecraft’s work. This seems to be a recurring problem with Lovecraft pastiches I have read; as a more casual fan of his stories, I’m often turned off by the fervent-fan approach many authors take. Half the time, as here, it’s enough to drive one mad — say, perhaps straight to Arkham Asylum. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

I don’t know about anyone else, but the first car I drove — a super-cool 1978 Volare green station wagon — only had an AM radio, so the musical choices for this young punk fan were talk radio, dentist-office music and one oldies station where I was thrilled to hear a Them song. So, as a teen, there was nothing cooler than having a choice of “Afternoon Delight,” “Mack the Knife” or Paul Harvey. Ugh!

Yeah, I had to endure a lot of awful music in those formative years, and this column is the end result. Fittingly, I have three books sharing titles of certain big hits of those days, with the third being a bit of forcing the matter, but close enough.

THE GAMBLER by Max Brand — You got to know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em — so the song goes and pretty much sums up this 1954 book. It’s all about a professional gambler named Corcoran who has just shot a guy lying in wait. The dying man’s last request is for Corcoran to tell this man’s stepson that he has died.

Corcoran, from the sounds of his dress and look, must resemble an Old West metrosexual, since people refer to him as some sort of dandy. Once he arrives in this sleepy town of San Pablo, he first goes to the local law to introduce himself and state his business of setting up a card game, and that he plays fair as long as others do the same. But he is not scared of playing dirtier if he is being cheated.

Once that is all done, he asks about this stepson and is told that the kid is some sort of hellspawn who beats on the other kids of the town, for no other reason than to show he is not to be screwed with. Corcoran meets this kid and finds the boy is only doing it for his own survival, since he is raising himself on his own.

Corcoran enters a card game that is run by crooks who accuse him of cheating. Add to this the local schoolteacher Corcoran falls for — and her betrothed, who seems to know Corcoran from his distant past — and this is not your typical Western. Corcoran is unlike any other Western hero — oh, he’s the type who’s quicker on the draw and highly intelligent. It’s just that he takes it all as it’s thrown at him, including charges of trying to hire a gunman.

Brand’s stroytelling is not only gripping, but has enough of the violence that makes his books so readable. It’s by no means a full-on action tale — more like HIGH NOON, just with a gambler as a lead instead of the sheriff.

LANDSLIDE by Desmond Bagley — I like some Fleetwood Mac, be it with Peter Green or my copy of TUSK, but that is as far as that goes. So you know when the book is called LANDSLIDE, you can probably guess what is going to happen. Having read two previous books from Bagley that were more spy-oriented, this 1967 novel switches up the notion that he only writes for that genre. This is more of a family drama and mystery with identity issues.

Robert Boyd is a geologist who is headed back to an area that was once his home. But Boyd is unsure of who he is. As we find out, he was in accident which claimed the lives of three others — all members of the powerful Trinevant lumber family. The Trinevants were the founding family of this area, along with another clan, the Mattersons. Boyd has come back to find out if the accident was really murder.

The book flashes back to Boyd’s recovery and the doctors explaining to him that he is now so disfigured, he needs plastic surgery that will make him unrecognizable. Once he arrives in town, he pretty much starts stirring up trouble and piquing the interest of an old reporter who sees through Boyd as if he were a screen door. Boyd discovers that the last remaining Trinevant is trying to fight off the business advances of the Mattersons, whose practices involve not only bullying, but running off any third-party interests by truck. (Yes, the scene depicted on the cover actually happens.)

Bagley has a few aces up his sleeves for the twists and turns along the way, but sadly, the story gets bogged down a bit at certain points, especially when it comes to all this lumber talk and geology lessons. Some readers might not want to slog through it for the payoff, which is a bit of a surprise, but nothing that will make readers go, “Oh, wow!” Still, Bagley plays around with an idea that some won’t see coming until it’s brought up, especially since we were led like sheep for this plot point the whole time. If you’re interested in Bagley, pick up his spy tomes. They are not only better-paced, but a lot more fun.

THE GUNSMITH #85: WINNER TAKE ALL by Robert J. Randisi — Fine, so the song is really called “The Winner Takes It All,” but I have no books called WATERLOO or DANCING QUEEN. So we’ll just have to make do with this 1989 Western, in which we find The Gunsmith entering a town where right away, he is challenged to a race by Max Holloway, a former Pony Express rider.

The race is a short one, with The Gunsmith being a clear winner, since Holloway tried to cheat and got his comeuppance: being pulled from his horse and landing on his face. This just sets off Holloway to no ends, so he challenges The Gunsmith to a real race across a thousand miles, with the winner not only getting a cash prize, but the heart of the woman whom Holloway has claimed for himself.

Of course, Holloway is not one to play fair, so he schemes his way through the race, be it buying any oats and grains that The Gunsmith might need for his horse, or even trying to find a duplicate for his own horse, The Iron Soldier, so he could ride both into the ground. The story moves along just like it was the derby itself, until both riders come to an obstacle of an Indian uprising.

I read a book about the Pony Express called ORPHANS PREFERRED, which has its moments, but gets muddled, which just showed that Randisi did his research before tackling this novel. He had all his details down long before that other book came out. This entry is actually light on gunfights and the prerequisite bedding down with a variety of women, but it’s a fine read for longtime fans of the series or newbies alike. My only suggestion is that Randisi should have just called the book THE RACE IS ON, since it fits better … and also, it’s my favorite George Jones song.

Next time: To Infinity and beyond! —Bruce Grossman

Buy them at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF DESMOND BAGLEY:
• FREEDOM TRAP by Desmond Bagley
• RUNNING BLIND by Desmond Bagley

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF MAX BRAND:
• THE FALSE RIDER by Max Brand
• GUNFIGHTER’S RETURN by Max Brand
• KING OF THE RANGE by Max Brand
• MASQUERADE: TEN CRIME STORIES by Max Brand

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF ROBERT J. RANDISI:
• DOUBLE THE BOUNTY by Robert J. Randisi
• THE LAWMAN by Robert J. Randisi
• LONE STAR LAW edited by Robert J. Randisi
• THE GUNSMITH #23: THE RIVERBOAT GANG by Robert J. Randisi
• THE GUNSMITH #44: THE SCARLET GUN by Robert J. Randisi
• THE GUNSMITH #128: THE CALIENTE GOLD ROBBERY by Robert J. Randisi
• THE PICASSO FLOP by Vince Van Patten and Robert J. Randisi
• SHELTER #2: HANGING MOON by Robert J. Randisi

T.T. Flynn (the first T stood for Thomas and the second for Theodore) was one of the more mature writers of Westerns to move into slick magazine and book publication in the 1950s. I know, it’s hard for you non-Western readers to imagine a story from that genre that was intended for grown-ups, but you should take a look at Flynn, Luke Short and Ernest Haycox as starters.

It’s not that their yarns never contained gunfights and saloon brawls, but those favorite elements were not the high points of their books. Stop a second and remember some of the movies based on their stories: Short’s CORONER CREEK, Haycox’s STAGECOACH and Flynn’s THE MAN FROM LARAMIE.

It’s the latter that’s our topic for today. It was serialized in the last great slick magazine to publish smart genre fiction, THE SATURDAY EVENING POST. That hit the stands every week, so you didn’t have to wait too long for an entire story to run, frequently condensed to two or three installments. I can remember reading new Perry Mason mysteries in the POST. LARAMIE saw magazine print in 1954, and then made the jump to book form the following year, the same year the film went into release.

The movie was the last of five collaborations between director Anthony Mann and actor James Stewart, a teaming that began with WINCHESTER ’73 in 1950. Mann and Stewart brought the same kind of maturity to Western movies that Flynn brought to fiction.

In it basic outline, LARAMIE sounds like any another Western: Will Lockhart comes to Coronado, N.M., in the guise of a fiddlefoot who buys the right to dig salt from a quarry. He doesn’t know that, due to deal-making and -breaking, he doesn’t really have permission. When he’s discovered loading his wagons by the real masters of the salt lake, they shoot his 26 mules and beat the living crap out of him.

Young Dave Waggoman, son of fading patriarch Alec Waggoman, orders his right-hand bully Vic Hansbro to hand out the thrashing. As soon as he’s able, Will faces down Hansbro in town and returns the favor.

“With better spirit Will ran at Vic Hansbro’s bristling frenzy and dodged Hansbro’s wild blow. The huge bleeding knuckles skidded over Will’s left ear. Even that close a miss caused a numb feeling, as if the rear had almost been torn away … Will brought both fists
up fast in a sledging strike into Hansbro’s beard and throat and underjaw. He never guessed it, Will thought unbelievingly.”

Oh, yeah, Flynn can write action — never an easy thing to do.

Smaller ranch owner Kate Canaday hires Will to protect her interests from the empire-building Waggomans, and pretty Barbara Kirby — gotta have a pretty young gal — is being courted by Frank Darrah, the novel’s true snake in the grass.

What the reader learns early on — and the book’s character much later — is that Will is actually an Army officer who is working undercover to locate his missing brother, or find the people who are responsible for his disappearance and the disappearance of a load of Army rifles.

The personal relationships are complex, even if the basic plot isn’t. All does not end well. You know, like in real life.

This new edition of THE MAN FROM LARAMIE is part of Leisure Books’ “The Classic Film Collection” of Western titles. Others in the series include DESTRY RIDES AGAIN — and if you know only the film, give the novel a try and you’ll see how very different they are — THE SEARCHERS and THE UNFORGIVEN, which is not related to the Clint Eastwood Oscar-winner.

These are all first-rate samples of older Westerns that will repay your time and money. I hope Leisure continues this series and includes some titles down the road that are by writers they don’t already publish. —Doug Bentin

Buy it at Amazon.

Shock and awe best sum up SANCTIFIED AND CHICKEN-FRIED: THE PORTABLE LANSDALE, an anthology of Joe R. Lansdale’s East Texas stories, issued by University of Texas Press. Definitely not for the fainthearted or the easily offended, this book also happens to be the definitive collection of his work, showcasing all the elements of his style.

Bill Crider provides a great foreword to the collection, relating his longtime friendship with Lansdale and talking about the pieces that made the cut, including some of Lansdale’s personal favorites. It features his best-known work — for me, at least — with “Bubba Ho-Tep,” the story of a rest home where one Elvis A. Presley resides.

See, Elvis tried to duck out of the spotlight, with an impersonator taking his place all those years ago, only for that person to up and die on him. Now close to 70, the real Elvis lives his life in an old rest home, where an Egyptian mummy has made it his hunting ground for souls. Elvis’ compatriot is an elderly black man who believes himself to be President John F. Kennedy.

All through the reading, it’s really hard not to picture Ossie Davis or Bruce Campbell coming through, since they captured those characters so well in the movie version. Having seen the film countless times, the novella greatly expands on the frustration of an aging Elvis who knows no matter what he says, they will never believe he was the king, and he finally becomes the one thing he always wanted to be: a true hero.

But “Bubba” is only a drop in the bucket of this book, since we have what Lansdale calls a true story in “Mister Weed-Eater,” in which a man who tries to be a Good Samaritan by helping out a blind gardener has his whole world turned upside-down in major ways. Who would ever believe that a blind man could be so capable of the things that happen to our narrator? “Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back” is about as bleak as a post-apocalyptic sci-fi story can get. Make sure to read it before bedtime. It’s sure to give you nothing but pleasant dreams.

“The Big Blow” tells not only of the storm that hit Galveston, Texas in 1900, but of a town that has hired a boxer to deal with a black boxer that the town is sick of. Lansdale fills this story with some truly disturbing characters who will stop at nothing to shut up what they see as a loudmouthed black man, all the while a giant storm heads their way with no regards to anything in its way.

Right before “Bubba Ho-Tep” takes center stage, there are two unflinching and brutal stories. “The Pit” seems like the gladiator scene from SPARTACUS, as put on by backwood rednecks, while “Night They Missed the Horror Show” tells the story of some good ol’ boys who don’t want to see the latest horror film, since the star is a black man. (The title is not mentioned, but I’m guessing it was probably NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.) But where the boys end up is even more horrifying than anything ever shown on screen. This story alone could probably turn a few people away with its sheer brutality and callousness.

Two excerpts from out-of-print books are also included, from A FINE DARK LINE and THE MAGIC WAGON, which is unlike any Western I’ve ever read. Make no bones about it: This collection just kicks major ass throughout, closing fittingly with a story of true friendship in “White Mule, Spotted Pig.” The only fault I could find with this book is that I wish it were even longer. —Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• LEATHER MAIDEN by Joe R. Lansdale
• MUCHO MOJO by Joe R. Lansdale
• SAVAGE SEASON by Joe R. Lansdale

Food, glorious food is our theme this time out. But I’m severely bending the rules on this one, since our second book barely fits; I would really need to add an S to the second word of the title. However, there are plenty of scenes of people eating by a campfire, so it’s covered. Meanwhile, the first book is more of a dessert, and the final book deals with a stale old muffin. Still, all three are worth searching out, that’s for sure — especially since the middle one is considered a true American classic.

THE SHARK-INFESTED CUSTARD by Charles Willeford — This 1993 novel is unlike anything else I’ve read by Willeford, since it’s not a straightforward story, but more like four vignettes whose main characters appear in each others’ stories. At the start of the book, all four friends live at the same apartment complex. The opening story is all told from the perspective of Larry “Fuzz-o” Dolman. He and pals Eddie Miller, Don Luchessi and Hank Norton are all shooting the breeze by the pool, discussing the hardest place to pick up women in Florida.

This is the type of conversation you’d expect in a Quentin Tarantino film, since it’s so honest and so normal in the sense this is how guys really act. There is no false bravado or any other bullshit; it just feels as though you are one of the gang. When it’s decided that picking up a woman at the drive-in is the place where it would be the hardest, they make a bet to see if one of them can pull it off. What happens totally throws this group of friends for a loop that will keep them bonded together for the rest of their lives, with Larry being extra careful by keeping a detailed log of all events if the shit ever hit the fan.

The second vignette mainly focuses on Hank, while the others make appearances. Hank is a drug representative for a large company and has reached his peak in the area, so the firm is trying to get him to take over a new territory. Larry explains to Hank how he has joined a computer dating service to bilk the company he works for extra expense money. But his dates have been less then stellar, with Hank taking a shine to Larry’s second date, a woman named Jannaire. But something Hank does not know is that Jannaire seems to be married to a psychopath who takes a few attempts on Hank’s life. To go further ruins the story, but like other Willeford plots, people are forced to extremes.

The third story deals with Eddie, an airline pilot always ready to help out his pals, and Don, a salesman for a silverware company who has fallen back into his loveless marriage. Don tries to escape this nightmare, but not without his daughter. Eddie tries to help him plan it all out instead of just going off half-cocked, which is exactly what Don does. You watch as Don slowly deteriorates and so believes that what he is about to do is the greatest idea since sliced bread, never taking into account what his little girl wants.

The book closes out with all four men living in Chicago, about to celebrate a birthday, which brings the whole book full circle. Going any further truly ruins the outcomes of the previous events. Willeford takes these four men and sets them on their own paths. Each vignette plays off another, but none of them really connect, except in the smallest threads. This is, without a doubt for me, Willeford’s masterpiece, and yes, I’ve read THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY and many others of his.

TRUE GRIT by Charles Portis — This 1968 story is told so simply, but don’t let that fool you. Portis created one of those books that will live on forever. Not only is it considered one of the modern classics, but one of its biggest fans is noted crime author George Pelecanos.

The story is told from the perspective of Mattie Ross, so unlike the film, the book is mainly focused on her. We only know at the start that she is retelling a tale from when she was 14 and bent on biblical revenge on the man who killed her father. For the time, she is a forerunner to the whole feminist movement, in that she is so independent in her ways and won’t be turned away just because she is a girl.

Mattie is pretty much told that her father’s killer is not a top priority for the local law enforcement. She is so enraged that she looks for a man who will help her in this crusade. That is how she comes in contact with a man named Rooster Cogburn. Anyone who knows the movie will automatically picture John Wayne with the eyepatch. But Cogburn is more ragged and rough-looking here, and also a bit of a quick draw. We are introduced to him as Mattie watches a trial proceeding, in which Cogburn is a witness. She puts forth an opportunity for him, with a promise of money to help her track down her father’s killers.

But Mattie is not the only person who wants to bring the killer to justice. Enter Texas Ranger Le Boeuf. Mattie gets to the point of trying to incorporate her religious beliefs into this manhunt, even when they have no bearing. Once it comes to the final showdown and she faces her deepest fears, we see the growth of this character to the woman she has become.

As we find out, Mattie is a much older woman relating the story of her youth, looking back at this one key moment in her life. Again, for a tale that is told so plainly, Portis plays into the readers, since we are only given the perspective from this one character. Still, it’s that simple type of storytelling that captures the reader from the start, so it’s no wonder that an author like Pelecanos champions this book so much: It’s much deeper than you would expect.

HERE COMES CHARLIE M by Brian Freemantle — Who doesn’t like a good muffin? Well, if that muffin is Charlie Muffin, then a few governments. Taking place two years after the events of the first book, this 1978 novel finds that there is no love lost for Charlie or his antics, which blew up in a few people’s faces: of course, the heads of British secret service.

Charlie, who has been living in hiding for all this time, pops his head up to pay some respects to a fallen comrade: a fellow agent who has been dead for years. Charlie visits his grave every year, except for these past two, but he figures no one would be watching it anymore and that it would be safe. But a few critical errors are made. First, Charlie is spotted coming into England and then going to a bank where he has left some money in a safe deposit box that has been broken into.

The story then follows two factions of people: the British agents after Charlie with a plan to frame that lay-about spy, and a group of Russians watching from the sidelines who don’t understand why he is risking himself. See, it was the British secret service with the help of a just-released prisoner who broke into Charlie’s safe deposit box, since the Brits were under the assumption that he probably had stored some documents that would ruin most of the agents and higher-ups.

But when it turns out to only be a storing place for a large sum of money and insurance polices, the British go even further. Their idea is to set up a few robberies with Charlie as the culprit, laying enough clues pointing at him —  namely, the theft of some Russian Fabergé eggs that are on display. But Charlie won’t fall for these traps to poke his head out, claiming his innocence. The British don’t learn and make a tragic error where Charlie not only takes out his revenge, but does it in such a way that people will finally believe he is dead.

This is a series that should be read in order. Sure, newbies will be able to follow the action, but they will be missing out on exactly the things Charlie did that are making all these people nuts in the first place. Freemantle makes his schlub spy even more sympathetic, thanks to the final few chapters. It’s totally understandable the action Charlie goes to at the end. No one is going will argue that even though it’s a bit extreme, you might do the same thing if you were in his shoes.

Next time: Action, adventure and it’s all true! —Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF BRIAN FREEMANTLE:
• CHARLIE M by Brian Freemantle

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF CHARLES WILLEFORD:
• THE BLACK MASS OF BROTHER SPRINGER by Charles Willeford
• MADE IN MIAMI by Charles Willeford
• PICK-UP by Charles Willeford

Here’s my Louis L’Amour story: When his short story collection YONDERING was published in 1980, the author set out on a promotion tour that brought him to Oklahoma City. I caught up with him at a mall bookstore where fans were standing in a very long line to get an autograph. We were told he had time to sign two books max, so I grabbed that new collection and a copy of the 1967 MATAGORDA.

I set my two books on the table in front of him and he signed YONDERING, but hesitated some when he saw the title of the second one. He looked up at me with a question on his face and I said, “I grew up in Matagorda County.” Grinning, he replied, “I knew there had to be a reason.”

So even L’Amour knew that MATAGORDA wasn’t one of his best books. I knew it, and now you know it, too.

But it’s not a terrible book, either, and given the fact that it was reprinted for 2008 — the L’Amour centennial — in a double edition with 1957′s THE FIRST FAST DRAW for less than five bucks, I say go for it.

MATAGORDA is combo trail drive and feuding families tale, with an emphasis on the feud. Much of that material is drawn from the history of the infamous Sutton-Taylor affair, one of the most infamous feuds in Texas history. Matagorda is the name of a Texas Gulf Plains county about 80 miles down the coast from Galveston. A lot of that Gulf Plains region was settled by Stephen F. Austin’s Old Three Hundred, and while folks are more likely to think of South Central and West Texas as the setting for traditional oaters, the East Central part of the state was just as rife with danger.

Perhaps even more unusual than the setting is the presence of one of the region’s worst hurricanes: the one of 1875. Tap Duvarney, the novel’s protagonist, has traveled to the coastal city of Indianola, the state’s second most prosperous port, to join up with an old friend, Tom Kittery, in the cattle business. On arrival, he learns that Kittery is part of a generations-old feud, and the Munsons on the other side believe that if you aren’t for them, you must be against them.

L’Amour saves up most of the action for the last quarter of the book, when the hurricane blows in and rips Indianola to pieces, and the feuding factions use the storm as a cover for seeking revenge.

THE FIRST FAST DRAW moves up the coast to the Big Thicket area of East Texas. Cullen Baker has returned home from a sojourn out west to avoid the Civil War. He spent a few days with Quantrill’s raiders, but the murder and rapine were too much for him. Now he has to face the carpetbaggers and Reconstructionists who have taken over state and local government, and has to deal with the people he left behind who have always hated him for being too independent-minded.

In long-standing L’Amour fashion, there is a pair of lovely young women who develop a thing for Cullen — one is someone he grew up knowing and the other is a sort-of mystery woman from New Orleans who showed up with a fistful of dollars and an itch to buy up as much property as she can lay her hands on.

It’s mostly a run-and-pursue story as Cullen is accused of being behind every bit of mischief in the territory. He has to keep his women out of harm’s way, protect his land and himself, kill the bad guys, and all while hiding out in the swamps.

L’Amour manages some nicely poetic descriptions of the Big Thicket and if he hurries some of the action sequences, he keeps the story moving at a fair clip. I suspect he’s cannibalized some early short stories for some of these scenes — something most of the writers who began in the pulps were prone to do — but that doesn’t detract from the narrative.

Again, since both these novels are here reprinted in one inexpensive volume, fans of Westerns are in for a treat. Neither of these books is top-drawer L’Amour, but they’ll do to ride with. —Doug Bentin

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE COLLECTED SHORT STORIES OF LOUIS L’AMOUR, VOLUME SIX: THE CRIME STORIES by Louis L’Amour

John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS is considered not only the greatest Western, but also one of the greatest American movies ever made. But how many people have actually read Alan LeMay’s THE SEARCHERS, on which that 1956 film was based? Leisure Books has reissued four classic Western books that have all been made into classic movies, in “The Classic Film Collection.”

Of course, the film took a few liberties with the 1954 story — some minor, like the name change of the main character, and some huge, which would lead into major spoilers. The plot is that of a family destroyed by an Indian raid with the lone survivor taken as a prisoner by the Comanches, with her only blood kin — Civil War veteran Amos Edwards — knowing the only left to do in his life is to track down his niece.

Amos is a complex character who will always resemble John Wayne in my mind, since the actor truly captured the essence of this man who knows fully well he is not welcome anywhere — even in his own homestead — anymore, thinking the recovery of his niece will be the final good thing he can do, no matter how long it takes.

Early on in the book, one of the points that people have discussed about the movie is made crystal-clear by LeMay: Amos was in love with his brother’s wife. Why this was cut from the film is just a shame, since it adds another layer to this complex man who, from the outset, just seems like a man bent on revenge and filled with racism. Amos makes no bones about killing any Indian his way (brutal scalping), but he is not alone in his search, being joined by Martin Pauley, who has his own ideas of why he wants to find this girl.

Martin slowly grows through their years-long hunt, even to the point of losing out on a future with another woman since he is so engrossed. These two men never falter in their search; we witness years pass by, with LeMay putting them through grueling encounters, sometimes only to be a few steps behind the Indians they believe have the girl.

For someone who only knew the movie, there were plenty of moments in the book which are just eye-openers that could never have been filmed in their time: suicides, brutal scalping, the results of an Indian attack and a vastly different ending. It’s no shock to see what drew people to turn this into a movie, since it’s such an expansive tale of redemption and guilt. Hopefully, people will grab this reissue and get the complete story that should be read — not only by fans of Westerns, but of great fiction. —Bruce Grossman

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I never tire of reading a good Western, and Robert J. Randisi usually provides those hours of enjoyment. DOUBLE THE BOUNTY and THE LAWMAN are reprints of two of his books featuring bounty hunter Decker, who seems to be an amalgam of some spaghetti Western heroes. He’s slightly different, in that he uses a sawed-off shotgun and carries on his horse a noose, which is fine by me, since I know going in that it will deliver some great Western action.

From 1987, DOUBLE THE BOUNTY deals with a legend of his own time: bank robber Brian Foxx. By all accounts, Foxx has been witnessed robbing two banks in two different states on the same day. How can that be? Well, Foxx has an identical twin named Brent pulling off the other robberies, making sure everyone gets a good look at both of them to expound these stories of his amazing crimes.

The problem is that Brian just likes to rob, never trying to hurt anyone, while brother Brent has an itchy trigger finger and lets it be known. But Decker believes he is only after one man. It’s not until he meets a 14-year-old girl named Felecia who thinks of herself as a reporter, and has a theory of how these robberies are happening, that he understands.

Randisi is playing in the modern-day dime novels that are brought up in this story: tales of derring-do and bounty hunters who have an air of mystery about them. The story moves so quickly, you’ll want to start another book once it’s finished, especially with the few twists Randisi provides and shows that not all bad guys don’t have a conscience. The book might not be as bloody as some in the Western genre, but it provides enough fresh material for readers to revisit this character.

Released the same year, THE LAWMAN, the second book in the trilogy, does not skip a step … or hoof, as the case might be. Again, Decker is on the hunt for a bank robber, but this one is a bit different, since it was Sheriff Red Moran who does the robbing.

Moran has a habit of taking the position of sheriff in a small town for a while, and then once he has settled, decides it’s time to take the town’s money and head off to Mexico. He has been pretty successful at this operation, which has drawn the ire of lawmen who actually do their jobs correctly. Also of note early in the story, Randisi has a bit of fun naming two characters after his compatriots: I mean, who are Eddie Gorman and Joel Lansdale supposed to be based on?

Decker comes off the same he did in DOUBLE, except there is no mention of the noose he travels with. But he is still the determined bounty hunter who get his man. As he follows Moran’s trail, he gets involved with a small, sleepy Mexican town that is being roughshod over by a pair of brother-and-sister bandidos, which delays his hunting. He also reunites with a former bounty hunter he used to partner with.

While all this is happening, Moran is offered the job of sheriff in the Mexican town he has run to countless times before. He figures “why not” and sets up his new life with the added bonus of a fellow gringo: a fiery redhead named Crystal, who sees Moran as her benefactor in her new business operation. All these plots and characters meet up in this town for a final showdown.

Randisi knows whose his audience is and gives them plenty to chew on before it all comes to a head, which is the best way these type of Westerns work. There are one or two suprises the reader won’t see coming, but then, in the Westerns Randisi crafted, that should be a given. —Bruce Grossman

Buy them at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• LONE STAR LAW edited by Robert J. Randisi
• THE GUNSMITH #23: THE RIVERBOAT GANG by Robert J. Randisi
• THE GUNSMITH #44: THE SCARLET GUN by Robert J. Randisi
• THE GUNSMITH #128: THE CALIENTE GOLD ROBBERY by Robert J. Randisi
• THE PICASSO FLOP by Vince Van Patten and Robert J. Randisi
• SHELTER #2: HANGING MOON by Robert J. Randisi

Mike Kearby’s new Western for young adults isn’t filled with the clichés that make the genre what it is. In THE LAST RENEGADE, you’ll find no cattle drives, land barons, rapacious railroads, gunfights on the street in front of the saloon, or dewy-eyed school marms in this one. There is an Indian, however — Young-Man-Who-Listens — and he’s the title character.

He’s shot and captured as an adolescent. and sold to a traveling tent show to be displayed as Chief Raging Buffalo, The Last Real Renegade Indian, a bloodthirsty savage with more scalps to his credit than Pawnee Bill has circus posters. The only education he receives in the ways of the white man is the brutal treatment he is accorded by his captors. He picks up the language to the extent he hears it regularly from the men who care for him. Or don’t care for him, as the case may be.

This is happening in the Texas of 1877. Slavery went out with Abe Lincoln, but no one gives a penny damn about a Comanche kid; most think that a cage is a better home than he deserves. The public lays its dimes on the counter, gasps, shudders, and then passes on to the next exotic treat.

Two years expire and the show arrives in the town of Eagle Pass, a city that lauds the local minister for his ownership of the springs that emit a miracle water, guaranteed to cure what ails you, from bronchitis to ingrown toenails. But the minister is not all he pretends to be. In fact, he’s nothing like what he pretends to be. And his relationship to Young-Man-Who-Listens, along with the courage of a couple of local kids, will change several lives.

Kearby doesn’t slack off when it comes to the adventure anyone would expect from a traditional Western. He provides the reader with a dash of historical lore, some local color, a bit of violence — most of which is offstage — and protagonists who do the right thing even at the cost of their comfortable way of life. Young readers will find Jake Miller and his female pal Marty to be realistically drawn adolescents. The Western town setting is sketched in enough to make all clear to anyone who is not as familiar with the Old West as we old-timers are.

Kearby is a retired high school English teacher. He provides a glossary of unfamiliar words and phrases, and explains the historical incident that served as his initial inspiration. There are even a few pages dedicated to the symbolism in the novel, and a list of discussion questions for those who want to delve into moral meaning.

Don’t let that English teacher stuff put you off. The book is mainly an adventure story and its moral lessons go down easily. It’s a good read for the young hard-to-get-‘em-interested-in-a-book crowd. —Doug Bentin

Buy it at Amazon.

Although the title may be JONAH HEX: LUCK RUNS OUT, luck be a lady for you, the reader, in this six-issue collection of DC Comics’ ongoing Western series. Either you like stories about an ex-Confederate bounty hunter with half a face, or you don’t; I freaking love them, and could read them all day long.

In the first tale, “My Name Is Nobody,” Hex busts a gang of Mexican bandits and ends up meeting his long-lost son in the process; neither are very happy about the family reunion. Next is “Four Little Pigs: A Grindhouse Western.” True to its name, it’s a bloody one, so it’s more along Hex’s normal lines, but with an fairly uncharacteristic villain: women.

“Star Man” finds Hex face to face with an old frenemy, and a flashback affords us a rare glimpse of our antihero at work in New York Harbor. In “Townkiller,” a young man whose teenage pal was brutally killed for no good reason tries to hire Hex to kill the whole damn town out of revenge — men, women and children. When Hex turns him down, the kid takes matters into his own hands. Bad move.

While “Return to Devil’s Paw” may not be the most ingenious of plots — Hex vs. Indians — its art by Rafa Garres is worthy of singling out. It’s rich in colors, packed with action that crosses panel lines, and its style is wildly reminiscent of Marvel’s adult-leaning comic magazines of the 1970s. Finally, in “Luck Runs Out,” a band of outlaws invades a town with a population of six … plus one, in hotel visitor Hex, who intends to even the odds. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS SERIES:
• JONAH HEX: FACE FULL OF VIOLENCE
• JONAH HEX: GUNS OF VENGEANCE
• JONAH HEX: ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG
• JONAH HEX: ORIGINS
• SHOWCASE PRESENTS JONAH HEX: VOLUME ONE

After taking my one-week vacation from the column, I’m back in action. So saddle up, little buckaroos, as we once again peruse the pulp piles of the Old West. All three books are from series, none of which have been covered here before. The only thing I do know going in is that they are all purported to be adult Westerns.

GUNN #23: BEDROLL BEAUTY by Jory Sherman — Sherman is one prolific writer, with more than 300 books to his name. But today we will focus in on one of the series he created for Zebra Western: GUNN. As Sherman states, it was not as raw as some of the compatriots in the genre, like Longarm and Jake Logan. Gunn is your quick-draw good guy who likes the ladies — nothing different from any other adult Western, but there is something not found in those other series’ continuity that plays an important part of this 1985 book during the climax.

Gunn is called back to his land, and is almost trampled by a herd of sheep. He meets up with a Mexican who has been shot in the leg and Gunn searches for help, leading him to find out someone has built upon his land. And not only that, but the area seems to be under the control of these two brothers named Bickle. Gunn has a run-in with one of them and kills him. No surprise to anyone who has read any Western — I mean, anytime there is a pair of brothers, one will always get killed while the other swears revenge.

Gunn discovers that the cabin built upon his land houses a mail-order bride, while her husband lives in a nearby town, sending supplies to her once a month. I think you can figure out what happens when he makes it there. Again, no surprises per se, until the final outcome, where Gunn confronts the bad guys.

Sherman’s writing is playful enough for someone who wants to dip their toes into the genre, but doesn’t want some of the explicit descriptions you would find in other series. That’s not to say that the story skimps; it just never gets to the point of overkill. If I come across more of the GUNN series, I’ll probably grab a few more to join my never-ending piles of Westerns, because nothing makes a day go by faster than six-guns, horses and ladies in bodices.

RENEGADE #4: DEATH HUNTER by Ramsay Thorne — Welcome to another case of a prolific writer under an assumed name; Thorne is actually Lou Cameron, who wrote a variety of titles, including a few movie novelizations (the one I would love to get is CALIFORNIA SPLIT). The cover of the 1980 book proudly states it’s an adult Western; that is the understatement of the day.

He is called Captain Gringo, but his real name is Richard Walker, a soldier-of-fortune type in the Old West who is wanted by a variety of governments for his actions. There are 36 books in this series and it seems to have continuity, since in this one, Gringo works for someone he has had run-ins with before.

The story opens with Gringo in Costa Rica, just passing time. But this being an adult Western, it does not take long to get to the saucy parts. Gringo meets up with a woman who is “Australian” and is looking for some love, but it’s all a setup to take out Gringo and roll him. Of course, he’s too smart to fall for that. He not only takes down the alleged attacker, but then forces himself on the woman, who is really British.

In fact, every woman he meets in this book, he sleeps with or forces himself onto, be it mother or daughter, a 13-year-old with daddy issues, a married mine owner, a Chinese immigrant who poses as a boy, and some Costa Rican women.

The reason Gringo was set up was that a British officer named Greystoke has been chasing him around before. But now he has a mission for Gringo: finding a German submarine base on the island. Gringo and his partner in crime gather a group of men to fight in this underground mission, and DEATH HUNTER follows their exploits and Gringo’s sexploits.

Where the base is hidden will be so obvious to readers. With its ridiculous plot points and gratuitous sex scenes, this book delivers in spades. Cameron seems to enjoy mixing the historical aspects of the time into this tale of old-school soldiers of fortune. Hopefully, I can find more of these books on the cheap.

SHELTER #2: HANGING MOON by Paul Ledd — The SHELTER series was actually written by Robert J. Randisi — yes, the man behind the GUNSMITH series just two years later. It seems Randisi was just getting his feet wet in the genre of adult Western and finding his footing.

SHELTER seems to be a forerunner to his GUNSMITH series, in that we have a lone gunman who is quick on the draw and a magnet to the ladies. Unlike his later series, this 1980 novel comes off kind of prudish in that area. Of course, he does sleep with women in the book, but it in no way compares to anything that was to come later on.

Shelter Morgan — aka Shell — is on the hunt for a soldier who double-crossed him years ago. But on his way to find this man, he takes a job looking for some missing gold stolen from a friend of his. Shell meets up with a Quaker wagon train headed toward the area he planned on going to — the more the merrier, but in this case, one too many. The missing gold is actually part of the wagon train under everyone’s nose, thanks to a brother-and-sister team under the belief that no would ever suspect them as being thieves … until the great reveal two-thirds in, when Shell finds out who these two really are in league with.

It’s a fine oater, but I’ve read better from Randisi. Again, it seems as though he was just getting his bearings in this type of genre, since the sex is only there as page filler — nothing too titillating. But still, everyone has to start somewhere. I’d say stick with the GUNSMITH books for the simple reason that there are so many and easier to find, plus the lead is not as one-dimensional as Shelter.

Next time: the good ol’ days of spying. —Bruce Grossman

Buy them at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF ROBERT J. RANDISI:
• LONE STAR LAW edited by Robert J. Randisi
• THE GUNSMITH #23: THE RIVERBOAT GANG by Robert J. Randisi
• THE GUNSMITH #44: THE SCARLET GUN by Robert J. Randisi
• THE GUNSMITH #128: THE CALIENTE GOLD ROBBERY by Robert J. Randisi
• THE PICASSO FLOP by Vince Van Patten and Robert J. Randisi

In NORTHFIELD, Johnny D. Boggs fictionalizes the famed 1876 attempted bank robbery in Minnesota by notorious outlaw Jesse James and the James-Younger gang. Several men died, but some of them belonged to the bad guys’ side.

The tale has been told many times before, but Boggs’ ingenious move is to tell it from planning, to execution, to aftermath, with virtually every new chapter told from the viewpoint of a different character, many of which never pop up again in the narrative. It works, and keeps the story on its toes.

In Kansas City, Bill Stiles hatches the plan, telling the James and Younger boys of “filthy rich” banks just ripe for the plucking. Off they go, taking a train — the first they intend not to rob, they note. They plot, enjoy the company of strangers, take comfort in the arms and legs of whores, and then storm the First National Bank of Northfield, claiming to have 40 armed men waiting outside.

History tells us things didn’t go as planned, and Boggs drops us right in the thick of it, primarily from those inside who were surprised by the intrusion and fought back — some surviving, some not. NORTHFIELD is bookended by Cole Younger expressing regret over the whole situation, which lends the Western an odd touch of humanity, lifting it above the average oater.

It helps if you know beforehand all the players involved — Wikipedia it — so that you’re not slowed trying to keep names straight. Boggs mostly does a good job in distinguishing the different voices; while the outlaws tend to sound the same, minor characters have their own flavorful tone, especially the prostitute Mollie Ellsworth, who speaks a welcome brand of saucy (“If you whore long enough, nothing surprises you, and I have worked the tenderloin a long, long time”).

Although those who hate the genre wouldn’t find this an opinion-changer, NORTHFIELD is more accessible than most Westerns; the vibes generated by cover’s resemblance to the film TOMBSTONE can’t be accidental, can it? —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• EAST OF THE BORDER by Johnny D. Boggs
• WALK PROUD, STAND TALL by Johnny D. Boggs

It’s another all-Western column for the simple reason that I always wanted to be a cowboy. Two of the books covered are from series that I’ve been featured before, while the last one is new to this column, but part of another long-running Western series. So dig out that copy of THE HIRED HAND, play yourself a Marty Robbins record and read on. Let’s kick things off with the warmest character of them all.

EDGE #11: SIOUX UPRISING by George G. Gilman — What better way to start than with the ultra-violent tale of one Joseph Hedges? Since I jump around so much with this series, I was a little surprised to find where Edge was at the start of this 1974 tale: married. Yeah, everyone’s favorite psychotic Civil War veteran is married and making a life on the lone prairie with his new bride.

But I think everyone can figure out from the title alone that things don’t go the way of a Roy Rogers film. Not at all. The Indians are attacking the homesteads, including our heroes. While Edge is away, he comes across a neighboring farm where a pregnant woman has been brutally killed, and the husband wants to borrow Edge’s rifle to end it all. (Take that, Zane Grey!) So Edge rushes home to find his wife is missing, and thinks the worst, setting off the plot of tracking down the group of Indians who have taken her.

Gilman ups the action with some of the deaths being film-worthy material, such as an arrow going through the mouth of a soldier who was bragging about how they beat the Indians. But after all the brutality — and there is plenty to go around — the author still has a little surprise no reader will see coming. I’ll just say THE GREAT SILENCE had a more upbeat ending. But that is what makes these books so much fun. You know going into an EDGE that it will never be happy, because he is just a miserable killing machine.

THE GUNSMITH #44: THE SCARLET GUN by Robert J. Randisi — Cramming in three types of Western stories into one book pretty much sums up this 1985 GUNSMITH read. We have the young kid who wants to prove himself a gunfighter, a vengeful woman who is out for justice for what happened to her family, and the greedy land owner who brings in a ringer gunfighter to take care of these problems. These have all been done before, so there is nothing to surprise readers.

But those who pick up GUNSMITH books are used to that tried-and-true storytelling, with the added bonus of a PENTHOUSE FORUM-type sex life for the characters involved. This opens up as Clint Adams — aka The Gunsmith — is getting his rocks off with the sister of the young gunfighter with something to prove, who runs away and tries to make a name for himself. The boy kills a few no-names and ends up working for Titus, the greedy landowner in a Colorado town.

Cue the second storyline of a woman named Scarlet turning up in the same town looking for revenge on Titus, who, years ago with four others, raped and killed her family, leaving her for dead. Then there is the hired gunman Bowman, who is sent for to dispose of Scarlet, but is more than ready to go toe-to-toe with Adams, who gets sucked into all of this since he is trying to bring back the young gunfighter to his sister, who’s all in a panic about her brother being killed.

All these plot points come together with a healthy mix of sexual activities. Going in, you know full well this is not Max Brand. It really is just the Western version of a men’s adventure book — nothing more, nothing less. It takes all of two hours to read and will be forgotten about 30 minutes later.

CHEYENNE BLOODBATH by Jake Logan — This 1986 effort is #90 in the John Slocum series. I could not find any information of who the real author is, but supposedly, this was another series that Randisi had a hand in. Again, this is very typical Western fare — nothing groundbreaking. This is like THE GUNSMITH, LONESTAR and LONGARM: geared toward the adult reader. While those other series seem to function on the basis of sex every few chapters, it’s not as prevalent here, but just as graphic — just the right amount of titillation.

Slocum rides into some town called Cheyenne, and comes across a hanging body left to the vultures. The body was a friend of his, and there was a note accusing his friend of being a thief who had $500 on him. But the money was lent to him by Slocum, so you can pretty much guess the rest of the book from that point on. The town is overrun by some secretive vigilante group run by a wealthy gambler named Kincaid. Slocum’s friend needed the money to buy his daughter out of a contract Kincaid has on her, like an indentured servant. It comes down to Slocum against the vigilante group.

This novel is very black-and-white with the characters; there is no gray whatsoever. Slocum is like all the Western heroes of his type: a super-fast draw and endowed like he could be a tripod. Still, it will pass the time for a Western fix, and these books are easy to find. Just realize that you will be able to figure out the plot. Even some of the brutal scenes came as no shock — well, maybe Kincaid forcing his wife to watch him and a whore together.

Next time: pissed-off guys with guns. —Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF GEORGE G. GILMAN:
• ADAM STEELE #1: REBELS AND ASSASSINS DIE HARD by George G. Gilman
• EDGE #2: TEN GRAND by George G. Gilman
• EDGE #4: KILLER’S BREED by George G. Gilman
• EDGE #6: RED RIVER by George G. Gilman
• EDGE #15: PARADISE LOSES by George G. Gilman
• STEELE #17: SATAN’S DAUGHTERS by George G. Gilman

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF ROBERT J. RANDISI:
• LONE STAR LAW edited by Robert J. Randisi
• THE GUNSMITH #23: THE RIVERBOAT GANG by Robert J. Randisi
• THE PICASSO FLOP by Vince Van Patten and Robert J. Randisi

Shelf space here at BBB&B headquarters is sparse. With this column, I get a chance to clear off a major portion of it with only three books. To say these tomes are a bit big is an understatement. Two of them are pulp collections with no crossover with the fantastic THE BLACK LIZARD BIG BOOK OF PULPS. The other is a collection of Westerns that could easily stop a bullet with its size. I’ve still got other books of huge girth, but my P.G. Wodehouse collection and Woody Allen omnibus are not appropriate for this column.

AMERICAN PULP edited by Ed Gorman, Bill Pronzini and Martin H. Greenberg — Plain and simple this 1997 collection has a who’s who of BOOKGASM favorites. To list everything in this book would just about take forever, and I figure most people will be familiar with most of the names already. If you’re not, then start buying their works.

But here are some truly great highlights. David Goodis’ “The Plunge” is a terrific short story from one of the true masters of noir, while Lawrence Block’s “Package Deal” is a short little tale of a hitman just doing his job of cleaning up a town for the higher-ups.

In “Down in the Valley,” James Reasoner tells a story of a Mexican crossing the border, looking for a new life and a promise of work. (This reminds me I really need to pick up TEXAS WIND at some point.) “Bothered” by Gil Brewer is about a truly bad seed in a quiet neighborhood. “We Were Picked as the Odd Ones” is Wade Miller’s tale of a serial killer with a thing for ice picks.

I’m not even scraping the surface. This is a great introduction to all these writers, which include Richard Matheson, Mickey Spillane, John D. MacDonald, Vin Packer, Donald Westlake, Evan Hunter and Marcia Muller. Each story has a brief paragraph about the authors, with the editors picking only the cream of the crop. AMERICAN PULP is a great find well worth grabbing. It leans toward the more recent of pulp’ if you’re looking for older works, there are plenty of those collections already out there.

PULP FICTION edited by Maxim Jakubowski — Like the BLACK LIZARD book, this 1996 anthology is packed to the gills and could have been even longer, according to Jakubowski’s introduction, in which he lists authors who had to be cut. But what’s here more than makes up for those missing few.

Going with a more traditional route of putting the older authors up front and moving right along, the collection starts off with Dashiell Hammett’s “Too Many Have Lived,” where Sam Spade is hired to find a missing man. We also have the Paul Cain story “Black,” which I’ve read before … and again, I just don’t get it. But fear not, because we also have James M. Cain and Gil Brewer — that’s a great one-two punch, with the latter being a tale of revenge from the mob.

Also included are Jim Thompson and a nice bit of humor from Mickey Spillane in “The Girl Behind the Hedge.” But what came off as a real nice surprise was Lawrence Block’s “A Candle for the Bag Lady,” a super-early Matthew Scudder story that tells of Matt receiving a check from the unlikeliest of sources and what he does to earn that money.

That’s only one of the surprises inside, including Charles Willeford, a Lew Archer tale from Ross Macdonald, and Robert Bloch providing some fun with a vampire story with a funny ending. It closes out with a Hollywood tale by some person named Donald Westlake. (I hear he has a few books worth checking out.) This is a monster of a book, especially in hardcover which is the version I own, but be on the lookout under its original title of THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF PULP FICTION.

THE BIG BOOK OF WESTERN ACTION STORIES edited by Jon Tuska — Closing out this column of massive short-story collections is a 1995 trip to the Old West, where I was familiar with only two authors: Ed Gorman and Max Brand. What truly is great about this one is the exposure to writers I’ve never heard of before; sadly, my Western reading is very limited to certain authors or series.

Alan LeMay is a name that seemed familiar to me for some odd reason, and in Tuska’s notes, it’s made clear why: He wrote the screenplay to THE SEARCHERS, one of the greatest Westerns ever filmed. His “Lost Dutchman O’Reilly’s Luck” is about the search for a supposed gold claim. For its short length, it tries to pack it all in, with a nice result.

A real standout for me was “Gun Fog” by William Colt MacDonald (coolest author name ever), with a down-on-his-luck ranch hand who gets taken in a game of cards and is forced into work for a ranch where not everything is legit. It’s a great story that has such a great reveal at the end, you’ll want to find more from MacDonald. This is one of the four stories in this collection that are considered novels. “The Strange Ride of Perry Woodstock” is another, this one by Max Brand. In his typical style, he doesn’t give the reader what’s expected in this story of a dying man and his secret message to pass along.

For me, the reason I picked up this book in the first place was fellow BOOKGASM contributor Ed Gorman, whose “The Victim” concerns two gunfighters: Jim Hornaday, who is haunted of killing a little girl by accident, and her cousin Andy Donnelley, who takes up shooting after her death. It fast-forwards to years later as Andy relates how he became more of a legend than he really is. Gorman does a great job of leading the reader along in this story of one gunman who wants to just be killed for his actions, while the other just wants nothing to do with gunfights anymore. It’s a terrific tale from a writer who needs to write more Westerns.

There are plenty of other stories in this anthology that will delight the little cowboys in all of us. They’re not revisionists takes; they mainly fall into the code of the Old West, where good guys wore white, and there is nothing wrong with that at all. So saddle up, buckaroos, and grab a copy.

Next time: With a little help from my friends. —Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF ED GORMAN AND MARTIN H. GREENBURG:
• A PRISONER OF MEMORY AND 24 OF THE YEAR’S FINEST CRIME AND MYSTERY STORIES edited by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg
• THE ADVENTURE OF THE MISSING DETECTIVE AND 19 OF THE YEAR’S FINEST CRIME AND MYSTERY STORIES edited by by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg
• THE WIDOW OF SLANE AND SIX MORE OF THE BEST CRIME AND MYSTERY NOVELLAS OF THE YEAR edited by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg
• WOLF WOMAN BAY AND NINE MORE OF THE FINEST CRIME AND MYSTERY NOVELLAS OF THE YEAR edited by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF MARTIN H. GREENBERG:
• THE BEST HORROR STORIES OF ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE edited by Frank D. McSherry, Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh
• NIGHTMARES ON ELM STREET: FREDDY KRUGER’S SEVEN SWEETEST DREAMS edited by Martin H. Greenberg

Series characters make this column so much fun, and this one introduces some long-dormant characters who have just been collecting dust on various bookshelves across this country. While one of them has been featured here before, it was a long time ago. So let’s meet a bunch of bad-ass mofos, as they purport themselves to be.

TROUBLE IS MY NAME by Stephen Marlowe — A man’s man is the best way to sum up Chester Drum, a globetrotting detective who bashes his way through cases. It’s quite apparent Drum is based on the Raymond Chandler archetype.

At the start of this 1957 book, I was bit lost, dropped in the middle of the action of Drum being interrogated by German officials. The case in question deals with missing money and a man named Fred Severing. The German government wants to find Severing, forcing Drum’s hand throughout, playing every angle he can.

I’m not going to say it was the easiest case to follow. It took me a few times to get used to Marlowe’s style. But once I did, it was really smooth sailing. Drum is a total kick-ass detective, even if he might have cribbed a few ideas from others. But it’s his coldness that sets him apart in the genre, as people are smacked and beaten as though it were normal, especially toward the end when blood starts to fly and Drum is not sure who to trust.

EDGE #15: PARADISE LOSES by George G. Gilman — It’s the glorious return of the most hard-edged Westerner ever: Edge, the seriously pissed-off Civil War vet with a razor blade and no regard for anyone but himself. Like some of the earlier Edge adventures, this 1974 installment relies heavily on the Civil War flashbacks, since the basic story is not what you would call something that could carry the whole tome.

Edge runs into two men tied up by a riverbank and who seem to be at death’s door due to a rising tide. Edge frees them for the simple request of some information. Of course, these guys have no idea who he is and give him grief for taking his sweet time. (Maybe next time, they can just call him a girl and see what happens.). The men explain the only town nearby is called Paradise, which is so holy-roller that even talking to women will get you in trouble. I mean, the town has a whipping post, and the only time I hear about that is when Gregg Allman is singing about it.

This is about the time Gilman goes into flashback mode of Edge and his fellow soldiers being captured and breaking free by stealing a steamship. In the other part of the story, Edge is not welcome in town and gets ripped off by the locals. They stupidly steal his money — a bad mistake in a big way. It’s great to read some balls-out action in the EDGE series, which is vastly superior to Gilman’s other Western output. Now I’m fired up to tackle more.

CHARLIE M by Brian Freemantle — Man, the publisher must have hated breakfast to change the original title of this 1977 book from CHARLIE MUFFIN to CHARLIE M. It probably sounded like some kids’ book, which it’s definitely not.

In the long line of British spies, Charlie Muffin reminded me of one in particular: Len Deighton’s creation Bernard Samson, since both aren’t liked by their bosses or even coworkers. How else could classify an agent like Charlie when it opens with him pretty much being used as some expendable agent — a decoy, to be precise? When Charlie makes it through the escapade, his fellow agents are off celebrating and shocked to see him come through it.

Even at the office, he is deemed a pest; his bosses want him to just be a clerk, forcing him to quit the service — funny, since Charlie is the best agent compared to his compatriots of two sycophants who do their bosses’ bidding. Charlie might be happily married, but that doesn’t stop him from sleeping with his secretary.

Who can believe Charlie puts up with all the bullshit thrown at him? But this is where Charlie shines: He understands he is not wanted and uses it to his advantage. Toward the end, he will be the agent responsible for getting a Russian general to defect. He’s way ahead of the game, since by the end, he is laughing all the way to the bank.

Freemantle takes the spy genre and puts some much-needed humor into the mix. I don’t mean laugh-out-loud moments, but more cleverness and wit. This is the first of a series I’ll be reading more of.

Next time: Gene Hackman and Charles Bronson, with a story by Terry Southern. —Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF GEORGE G. GILMAN:
• ADAM STEELE #1: REBELS AND ASSASSINS DIE HARD by George G. Gilman
• EDGE #2: TEN GRAND by George G. Gilman
• EDGE #4: KILLER’S BREED by George G. Gilman
• EDGE #6: RED RIVER by George G. Gilman
• STEELE #17: SATAN’S DAUGHTERS by George G. Gilman

Never thought I’d ever view a former Confederate soldier missing half his face as comfort food, but that’s exactly what the weird Western bounty hunter known as Jonah Hex is. JONAH HEX: ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG is the fourth collection of Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti’s current revival series for DC Comics.

The first tale, “Texas Money,” has Hex hired by an owner of a house of ill repute to find his two kidnapped nephews. Juggling between Texas and Oklahoma, our antihero also takes the opportunity to hunt down a hooker wanted for murder. Hex fulfills his bargain to the proprietor, but in a manner that pisses him off, which carries over into the second part, “Unfinished Business.” And just wait until you see what Hex does with a buzzard!

“Devil’s Paw” is among your more conventional Western stories, with Hex trading shots with a bad guy and his gang, pursued by both Pinkerton agents and a scalp-happy Indian. It has one of those kick-in-the-teeth endings (literally) that makes this series so cathartic.

In “The Current War,” Hex is asked to steal back an automaton that its supposed owner claims has been stolen by inventor Thomas Edison, who begs to differ. A one-armed schoolteacher reminisces about his dealings with Hex in “Who Lives and Who Dies” — yes, of course that lost limb is involved — and the book ends with “All Hallows Eve,” the strangest tale of the bunch, what with the appearances of Bat Lash, El Diablo and a supernatural “prairie witch.”

Artists Phil Noto, Jordi Bernet and David Michael Beck all sport their own styles. Noto is best suited to this current, adult take; Bernet harkens back to Hex’s 1970s glory days; and Beck’s art is nearly photorealistic. But it’s the writing team of Gray and Palmiotti who keep this character so exciting and this series so very much alive. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS SERIES:
• JONAH HEX: FACE FULL OF VIOLENCE
• JONAH HEX: GUNS OF VENGEANCE
• JONAH HEX: ORIGINS
• SHOWCASE PRESENTS JONAH HEX: VOLUME ONE

You got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them. Case in point: The original start-off book to this week’s column was going to be Don Von Elsner’s THE JAKE OF DIAMONDS, but I could not make it past chapter two — it was that tedious, and I was even warned that the novel was like a wheelchair in molasses. So decided to go with something we all know and love.

JOKER IN THE DECK by Richard S. Prather — Shell Scott is back is this 1964 novel — one of his “everything’s fun until someone gets killed” adventures. Now this is more like it for a Shell Scott story: It’s light enough with a nice mystery to go along, as Shell is invited over to a friend’s home to watch some movies. Afterward, they decide to play strip poker. But the party is over when it turns out the host’s brother is found dead, killed by a bullet.

Right away things stick in this case, with Shell discovering the victim was a con man who just got out of prison, so he assumes everything is settled. Then he starts digging into the con man’s past, which included purchasing an island off the coast for way too much money. Somehow, a baby food company is tied to it all. The case is a lot larger than expected, with the discovery of an oil gusher on the island and a drug ring operating under the noses of everyone.

Prather keeps it fun — I mean, as much fun as a murder story can be — with Shell falling for a knockout dame who wants to play a game of Eden with her as Eve. To really go into this book would ruin the surprises, with the idea that the bad guy might actually get away with it all. Could it really happen? Quick answer: No. But have fun with the fine mystery.

THE GUNSMITH #23: THE RIVERBOAT GANG by J.R. Roberts — When I think of riverboats, the one thing that comes to my mind is a room full of gamblers playing poker, all wearing cravats and diamond stickpins. Well, that’s exactly what we get at the start of this 1983 GUNSMITH title, with Clint Adams taking a much-needed vacation to New Orleans, figuring he’ll pass some time with some riverboat gambling.

But once in the game, he discovers that one of the players is a card cheat, yet says nothing until another member of the table accuses Clint of cheating. Now, that’s not a bright thing to do — I mean, he’s the Gunsmith and can draw faster than most. The accuser is none other than one of the riverboat’s owners, Roger Lacombe, which stirs up a wasp’s nest of trouble for Clint.

Everything gets smoothed out by the other owner, Roger’s older brother Gaston, who knows who Clint is and offers a job to him as muscle. Clint wants nothing to do with it, even when Gaston tries to use his mistress as enticement. Once in New Orleans, Clint tries to distance himself from these siblings, only to find out they run a syndicate in town. Clint tries to do the right thing by stopping a robbery of an old man who turns out to be a retired judge, but some of the local cops are on the take from the Lacombe brothers. Most can guess where this book is headed: The little guy vs. the big scary syndicate.

There is plenty of action in this book — both kinds, if you catch my drift. Author Roberts — aka Robert J. Randisi — has created a very breezy Western that can be devoured in an afternoon, never taxing the reader with confusing plot points or hidden clues. It’s just straight-up, good vs. bad, with the core being an engaging lead character who always seems to run into problems and willing ladies. I totally regret not having more of these novels in my collection, but they are easy enough to find out there.

LONE STAR #22: AND THE TEXAS GAMBLER by Wesley Ellis — Closing out the column this week is the 1984 return of that redheaded cowgirl Jessica Starbuck and trusted companion Ki. This novel picks right up in the bigger picture of Jessie’s adventures with the secret group that killed her father and is trying to gain control of her vast empire.

People are spreading rumors about Jessie and how she might be dead and how her company is failing. Once she arrives in the East Texas town to meet one of her managers, he is killed off by some of the baddies, with Jessie saved by a gambler named Black Jack Morgan.

Ki gets into his own set of adventures, including getting thrown off of one of Jessie’s own ships. (Wait until you see how she handles that little incident.) Ki teams up with one of the workers to find out what is going on, only to learn it’s a setup that is supposed to kill him. But that won’t stop him, especially when every woman he meets wants to bed him.

While this happens, Jessie gets played for a fool and kidnapped by a group of men who reveal they are part of the European contingent bent on revenge, with a great scheme of having someone double for Jessie to sign over ownership of her company to them.

The LONE STAR books are fun, but this one seems a bit repetitive in the plot department, especially the mechanics of Jessie and Ki always being split up early on, only to meet up again at the climax. But if you spread the reading of them out over a course of a few months, you won’t mind as much. I don’t suggest reading one after another or you might get a sense of déjà vu.

Next time: THE DARK KNIGHT and HELLBOY II? It really is the summer of sequels! —Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Amazon.

“The sharp tip of the steel blade struck the apache in the solar plexus and pierced upward into his heart.”
–THE GUNSMITH #23: THE RIVERBOAT GANG by Robert J. Randisi

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF WESLEY ELLIS:
• LONE STAR #35: AND THE BUFFALO HUNTERS by Wesley Ellis

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF RICHARD S. PRATHER:
• DANCE WITH THE DEAD by Richard S. Prather
• THE PEDDLER by Richard S. Prather
• THE SHELL SCOTT SAMPLER by Richard S. Prather
• THE SWEET RIDE by Richard S. Prather
• WAY OF A WANTON by Richard S. Prather

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF ROBERT J. RANDISI:
• LONE STAR LAW edited by Robert J. Randisi
• THE PICASSO FLOP by Vince Van Patten and Robert J. Randisi

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF J.R. ROBERTS:
• THE GUNSMITH #128: THE CALIENTE GOLD ROBBERY by J.R. Roberts

John D. Nesbitt is a relatively prolific contemporary writer of Westerns, but DEATH AT DARK WATER is my first sampling of his work. It’s not bad and it’s a fast read, but it seems as if it’s a mainstream novel trying to break out of a Western shell.

Artist Devon Frost travels to the town of Tinaja on the New Mexico/Mexico border. All he wants out of his trip is the chance to visit Rancho Agua Prieta, because he’s heard that there are the ruins of an old Spanish chapel on the grounds. He wants to ask permission of the owner to go onto his property by day and sketch the place in preparation of going home and producing a painting.

Don Felipe is the landowner, having wed the widow of the previous owner, whose daughter, Petra, despises him. Although we never see Don Felipe putting any moves on Petra, the young woman is convinced that he would if he thought he could get away with it. She is also being pursued by her cousin and by a young man from a neighboring ranch. We think several times that Nesbitt will follow the trail laid out so many times by Max Brand and allow Frost to fall for her, too. I know, but I won’t tell.

One of Petra’s confirmed admirers is murdered on the ranch, and a mystery results. The thing is, the mystery is fairly weak as the choice of suspects is thin and nobody does anything that could pass for investigation. What’s worse for the reader of Westerns is that the book contains about as much action as a Henry James short story. Each day, Frost goes to the chapel and sketches; Petra visits him and invites him to the house for lunch; he goes and chats with her and her mother; he returns to the chapel; he goes to town and back to his hotel. That’s it.

The book is well-written and Nesbitt has a nice eye for the desert country of Southern New Mexico. Frost becomes an interesting character through his sometimes questionable friendships in town, but our interest in him doesn’t lead us anywhere.

I suspect Nesbitt is trying in this novel to bring some slightly more mainstream concerns to a traditional Western setting and plot — if I were more familiar with his work, I could say for sure — but the book seems pretty inert to me. When I read a Western, I want it to be more of a genre novel than this one is. —Doug Bentin

Buy it at Amazon.

This column is all about finding gold in piles and piles of paperbacks. Sometimes I succeed, but other times I end up with fool’s gold or — even worse — zinc. The common thread today is all the other metals in between, mentioned in the titles.

THE BRASS GO-BETWEEN by Ross Thomas — I’m a fan of Charles Bronson films, especially his 1970s output. There was this one called ST. IVES, which my local UHF station would always show. Until just recently, I never knew that it was based on a series of novels. (Paying attention to the credits also helps.) So I went on a book hunt to find a few of them, lo and behold, I already had one of them.

From 1969, THE BRASS GO-BETWEEN is the first in the series chronicling Philip St. Ives’ life as a professional go-between. He’s a former newspaper reporter who seems to be a man of the people — even the criminals — sort of like Jimmy Breslin, for all you old-timers.

St. Ives is offered a job of paying off some thieves who have stolen a rare African shield that holds huge significance to the African nations. The job is to be a simple pay-and-pick-up type of detail, until it’s discovered that a guard from the museum turns up dead — and one who had a huge heroin problem. A set of African dignitaries wants St. Ives to double-cross the museum so they can retain the shield, since it will unite their people.

As you can tell, what should have been simple becomes harder and harder as we move through the story. What sets this series apart is that St. Ives is not some gun-toting, breaking-down-doors type; he fits more into the mold of an Ellery Queen, gathering information to figure it all out.

If you have ever seen the Bronson film — which is based on the third book THE PROCANE CHRONICLE — then do yourself a favor and look for them all. You can find them both under Thomas’ name or his Oliver Bleeck pseudonym he used for this series.

STEELE #17: SATAN’S DAUGHTERS by George G. Gilman — From 1978, here is another entry from that second-tier series STEELE. This time, our hero stumbles upon a campsite filled with ladies who happen to be part of a dance troupe and are whores, but no one has sex. Plus, it lacks all the violence from the much-superior series EDGE, which Gilman also wrote.

Steele is captured after one of the newest additions to the troupe thinks he was sent by her father to bring her back. But, of course, that lasts as long as most new shows on FOX (ASK HARRIET, anyone?), since Steele is needed when a group of men stumble upon the camp and are ready for some loving.

This is how the book moves along each day: They run into another group who wants to bed these women or kill them — Indians, to be exact. Even when they come up to a fort, these broads still can’t catch a break. Of course, this all leads to a father making an appearance, demanding his daughter back, with a few action sequences to break this all up.

It just feels so by-the-numbers with the plot and the reveal at the end, but for the total time of an hour it took me to read, it passed the time as my clothes were being washed. Stick with the EDGE novels, since those are just blood and guts.

GOLD COMES IN BRICKS by Erle Stanley Gardner — A woman being blackmailed, a salting of gold scheme and, of course, cops being played for fools. It must be another book in the Cool & Lam series, written under Gardner’s A.A. Fair pen name. For those keeping track, this 1940 entry is actually the second book in the series, but there is very little continuity, so no need to worry if you read them out of order.

It opens with Donald Lam taking some jujitsu lessons at Bertha Cool’s behest, since she is sick of her little Donald being pushed around, leading into her getting a new client: Henry Ashbury, who is mighty worried about his daughter Alta, who has written two mysterious checks, each for $10,000.

Donald’s job is to find out who she is paying and why, so he goes undercover, living at the estate under the guise of Henry’s new personal trainer. Since this is a Gardner novel, that bit of mystery is solved pretty early on, especially when the blackmailer winds up dead, with Donald hearing the gunshots. Donald makes it his job to find out who’s behind the shooting and why, which leads into a phony stock scam of gold mines.

This is another great entry in Gardner’s Cool & Lam output. It might get a little rushed toward the end, but these books never fail to deliver some truly great mysteries to the last page, especially with characters like Bertha and Donald to keep the readers on their toes.

Next time: My dad is getting me a bitchin’ Camaro! —Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF ERLE STANLEY GARDNER:
• THE BIGGER THEY COME by Erle Stanley Gardner
• THE CASE OF THE HESITANT HOSTESS by Erle Stanley Gardner
• THE CASEBOOK OF SIDNEY ZOOM by Erle Stanley Gardner
• CROWS CAN’T COUNT by Erle Stanley Gardner
• PERRY MASON SOLVES THE CASE OF THE PHANTOM FORTUNE by Erle Stanley Gardner
• SOME SLIPS DON’T SHOW by Erle Stanley Gardner
• SOME WOMEN WON’T WAIT by Erle Stanley Gardner
• TRY ANYTHING ONCE by Erle Stanley Gardner

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF GEORGE G. GILMAN:
• ADAM STEELE #1: REBELS AND ASSASSINS DIE HARD by George G. Gilman
• EDGE #2: TEN GRAND by George G. Gilman
• EDGE #4: KILLER’S BREED by George G. Gilman
• EDGE #6: RED RIVER by George G. Gilman

Sadly, this is not my long-awaited tribute to Elvis. Nah, this column is all about different types of kings, none of which are of the King Arthur variety or sing “Suspicious Minds” or hit girls in the chest with pool cues. (Read ELVIS: WHAT HAPPENED for that little story — it’s packed with such tidbits.)

KING’S RANSOM (1959) by Ed McBain — It’s the return of the only cop precinct busier than the folks on LAW & ORDER: the good old 87th. As the cover to this 1959 novel states, what should have been the perfect crime goes horribly wrong, with a set of kidnappers thinking they grabbed wealthy businessman Douglas King’s child … except they grabbed the chauffeur’s son instead.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, since King is in the middle of trying to gain controlling stock of a show company he works for, putting every last cent into the deal so he can kick the whole board out. So already, you know King is the ultimate prick, making Donald Trump look like a saint.

Once King receives the call about his “son,” he explains that his kid Bobby is upstairs. The kidnappers are thrown for a loop and still want to go through with the plan, with King not budging one iota, making himself to be the ultimate asshole. Even the cops can’t believe his cold-hearted nature. Will King see the errors of his way, especially since one of the kidnappers is hell-bent on the money or else?

For a book written close to 50 years ago, it stands up extremely well. There is not a lot to date the story — just a few minor things like trunk lines and such. But I think most people know they will get their money’s worth when they see McBain’s name on a spine.

KING OF THE RANGE by Max Brand — It kills me to say this, but this 1935 novel is not a Max Brand to add to your reading list. It’s just that the story feels all over the map and a bit confused, beginning with Carrick Dunmore, probably the saddest excuse of a cowboy.

People think of him as just a waste of space, but that all changes once he finds out that he has a relative who vows to take care of him when he turns up hurt. Then the story moves into a bit about Jim Tankerton, who is like the King Solomon in town, dispensing justice and wisdom when problems arise.

Then from here, I lose track of what the story is really about. since we are told that Tankerton and Dunmore were childhood friends. They team up together since there is a bounty on both their heads. I lost my way too many times throughout, which is a real shame since Brand is normally a great Western writer.

But I guess you might come across a clunker or two in the output. So stick with the other ones I’ve covered; they won’t let you down. But if you can make heads or tails of this one, help yourself.

THE DESTROYER #24: KING’S CURSE by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir — Ah, there’s nothing like the soothing pages of a DESTROYER novel to kickstart a reading binge. Another from the early days of the series still handled by its creators, this 1976 installment has Remo and Chiun dealing with Actatl, a bizarre religious cult from a long-lost civilization in South America whose members are a bit upset about their precious rock monument called Uctut.

It has been defiled, so they cut out people’s hearts with a stone knife. Plus, they like to wear a bizarre get-up that makes them look like they could be related to Big Bird. This being a DESTROYER novel, they have other motivations besides the rock defacing. Oh, and they also have stumbled upon a secret organization called CURE. Will these people ever learn? I mean, once you find out about the group, you pretty much know it’s not going to end pretty for anyone facing Remo and Chiun.

But why is the group picking out a congressmen and a rich socialite as its first two victims? As Remo investigates, it turns out this group has some pretty high-up friends in all kinds of positions and places. Action-packed is an understatement with this one, plus we see how much Remo is for women’s lib. Another classic that will make you just laugh with delight once it’s all said and done.

Next time: It’s all elemental. —Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THE DESTROYER SERIES:
• THE BEST OF THE DESTROYER by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir
• THE DESTROYER #11: KILL OR CURE by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #13: ACID ROCK by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #14: JUDGMENT DAY by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #15: MURDER WARD by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #18: FUNNY MONEY by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #22: BRAIN DRAIN by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #23: CHILD’S PLAY by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #30: MUGGER BLOOD by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #32: KILLER CHROMOSOMES by Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #38: BAY CITY BLAST by Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #39: MISSING LINK by Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #46: NEXT OF KIN by Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #48: PROFIT MOTIVE by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #49: SKIN DEEP by Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #52: FOOL’S GOLD by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #11: KILL OR CURE by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #55: MASTER’S CHALLENGE by Will Murray
• THE DESTROYER #78: BLUE SMOKE AND MIRRORS by Will Murray
• THE DESTROYER #89: DARK HORSE by Will Murray
• THE DESTROYER #104: ANGRY WHITE MAILMEN by Will Murray
• THE DESTROYER #145: DRAGON BONES by Tim Somheil
• THE NEW DESTROYER: CHOKE HOLD by Warren Murphy and James Mullaney
• THE NEW DESTROYER: DEAD RECKONING by Warren Murphy and James Mullaney
• THE NEW DESTROYER: GUARDIAN ANGEL by Warren Murphy and James Mullaney

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF MAX BRAND:
• THE FALSE RIDER by Max Brand
• GUNFIGHTER’S RETURN by Max Brand
• MASQUERADE: TEN CRIME STORIES by Max Brand, edited by William F. Nolan Jr.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF ED MCBAIN:
• 80 MILLION EYES by Ed McBain
• EVERY LITTLE CROOK AND NANNY by Evan Hunter
• THE GUTTER AND THE GRAVE by Ed McBain
• LEARNING TO KILL: STORIES by Ed McBain
• LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE DEAF MAN by Ed McBain
• THE PUSHER by Ed McBain
• SHOTGUN by Ed McBain
• SO LONG AS YOU BOTH SHALL LIVE by Ed McBain
• TRANSGRESSIONS edited by Ed McBain

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF WARREN MURPHY:
• GRANDMASTER by Warren Murphy
• TRACE: GETTING UP WITH FLEAS by Warren Murphy

Funny how literature has done what film has not: keeping zombies fresh. The whole apocalypse and survivors-stuck-in-single-location thing has been done to, well, death. While recent zombie movies are content to tread this same path, the folks are Permuted Press know the trick in making the reanimated relevant lies in keeping readers on their toes. THE UNDEAD: FLESH FEAST is the third installment in the small press’ short-story franchise, and perhaps the most inventive yet.

For instance, in a twist on I AM LEGEND, Ryan C. Thomas’ “Spoiled Meat” features a man who can’t get zombies to bite him. He simply can’t bring his miserable, lonely life to an end, no matter how hard he tries. Have you ever read anything like that?

Early stories — like Michael Stone’s “Memory Bones” and Rich Moore’s “Basic Training,” which respectively involve a doctor making a house call to a 149-year-old zombie, and soldiers having sex with headless female zombies — may give you pause, but the really juicy meat is just around the bend.

In “Deadtown Taxi,” Matthew Bey follows a zombie who still plies his trade as a cabbie, employing Travis Bickle-like methods to save uninfected girls who apply out of desperation to participate in “Live Death Acts” at the local strip club. Meanwhile, A.C. Wise reimagines THE WIZARD OF OZ in “Killing the Witch,” casting Dorothy as a witch herself, as well as the creator of The Scarecrow, whom she assembled not with straw, but others’ dead limbs.

One of the more bizarro stories is the two-part “Fetalfied-Gigolo,” in wich Andre Duza presents the disturbing tale of a woman who talks to the fetus inside her. The catch is that said fetus died 10 years prior, and never passed. It finally emerges, however, to take shelter in the body of a womanizing party guy. My favorite line is a throwaway to describe the mom: “She looked like a clown, the kind that killed folks.”

A virtual ghost ship lands on a sandy beach inhabited by “cannibals” in Eric Turowski’s “Ile Faim.” There are enough of them to have the ship’s crew soon saying, “We’ve got to get off this cursed place.” As escapist as that tale is, Kevin Boon’s “As the Day Would Quake” rocks with resonance. It explores the daily life of a FEMA “escort” who takes the infected to the “kennels.” Things get personal when a “Seize and Retain” order is issued for his own daughter, whom he can’t believe is sick.

With a delightfully delirious EC edge is “If You Believe.” Scott Standridge opens this holiday number with a mall Santa Claus skydiving to the shopping complex parking lot, but splattering on the pavement when his chute fails. A little girl witnessing it is traumatized, thinking Christmas won’t come because Santa is now dead. Her father reassures her it will, if she only believes. Given the book’s theme, you can guess the ending; in a less specific collection, the coda would come as more of a surprise, but the story is still a highlight.

Closing out of the book is a weird Western from Tim Curran titled “The Legend of Black Betty,” in which a plague going through town is diagnosed by Doc Rifer as yellow fever. But as we all know, yellow fever doesn’t kill temporarily. The real object of blame is “some negro whore called Black Betty” who’s into “spooky voodoo shit,” and after burying his daughter twice, a grieving father goes on the hunt for revenge.

Included as an extra is an excerpt from D.L. Snell’s novel ROSES OF BLOOD ON BARBWIRE VINES. It’s nice to get a taste of it here, but BOOKGASM recommends you forego the few pages and spring for the full package. Snell is one of the editors of FLESH FEAST, incidentally, along with Travis Adkins, and they’ve done another terrific job assembling this all-you-can-eat buffet of terror. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon or Permuted Press.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS SERIES:
• THE UNDEAD: SKIN AND BONES edited by D.L. Snell and Travis Adkins
• THE UNDEAD: ZOMBIE ANTHOLOGY edited by D.L. Snell and Elijah Hall

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THESE AUTHORS:
• DEAD SEA by Tim Curran
• ROSES OF BLOOD ON BARBWIRE VINES by D.L. Snell

UNBRIDLED COWBOY is the autobiography of Joseph B. Fussell. No, you’ve never heard of him. He was one of the unremembered ones. Add all the Joe Fussells together, do the division, and what you come out with will be the classic American Westerner.

He’s part cowhand, part lawman, part outlaw, part settler (a small part) and all fiddlefoot. One of the reasons the Western as a popular genre has fallen out of favor is that many Americans no longer believe that characters like Joe Fussell were real people. Too bad. That false belief does no good for anyone.

Fussell’s manuscript has been edited by his grandson, E.R. Fussell, a lawyer. I like the way Joe’s attitude seems to have passed down. The preface begins with this anecdote: “In May 2005, I emailed my cousin Joe Johnson in San Clemente, California, from my law office in Le Roy, in western New York state. ‘Cuz,’ I wrote, ‘I’m editing Gramps’ book. Any suggestions? Bob.’ His four-word reply — ‘Reduce Mexican body count’ — showed up on my screen the next day.”

Joe’s attitude toward violence does appear at first glance to be pretty casual, but look more closely and you’ll see someone who is offended not just by the physical harm it does, but by the immorality of its thoughtless application. Of course, he’s wounded — in more ways than one — when he is whipped harshly by the principal of his school, but he also knows that he had it coming. Later, he chats about a man he worked for who liked to play practical jokes on people, but retired into pouting whenever he was the recipient of someone else’s idea of humor. There is something Joe knows is unfair about that, something that deserves a little comeuppance.

During one of his wandering spells as a youth, Joe witnessed what he assumed was plain-as-day murder along the Trinity River bottom until he put the whole story together. A large black man, who had just killed a hog with a single rifle shot, was standing over his prey when another shot rang out and the man collapsed. Joe’s boss, a Mr. Smith, rode up, slipped a rope under the dead man’s arms, hauled him up from the ground, and rode off with him, leaving behind the man’s rifle and the hog as a warning to other would-be thieves.

Smith “was considered scrupulously honest and honorable in all his dealings as long as the other fellow did the same. But woe unto the man who tricked him or resorted to unfair practices. He was known to cast aside all sense of reason and to kill without thinking of the consequences.”

Brutal? That would be hard to deny. Kind of reminds you of George Carlin’s great line: “You know the good part about all those executions in Texas? Fewer Texans.”

But in an odd way, there’s something clean about justice that operates on that level. It’s certain and there’s no doubt about why it’s being administered. Don’t break the rules. You can probably get away with bending them, maybe with twisting them a little — but you can’t break them. You know what’ll happen if you do. When those guys said, “Thou shalt not,” they meant “Thou shalt not.”

Joe’s wandering ways eventually led him from the Hell’s Half Acre of Ft. Worth to California. He lived from 1879 to 1957, nearly 80 years of rough times, through the Great Depression and both World Wars. He was always determined to have things his own way, stubbornly, even foolishly so at times. This hard-headedness frequently made him the victim of his own determination, but the last thing we want from a Western wanderer is wishy-washy fence-sitting. When he believed something needed to be done, Joe generally believed it needed to be done right now. A slave to indecision he was not. He would have driven Hamlet crazy. Crazier.

UNBRIDLED COWBOY is a real find. Fussell is a terrific storyteller. His style is amiable and colloquial. You can almost hear the pauses as Joe stops for a moment to take a sip of coffee. He’s also pretty damn funny. His most unusual Westernisms will be used in the dialogue of novels for years to come. Here he is on his earliest adventures with tobacco:

“I could not imagine how mother knew I’d been smoking. It did not occur to me that she, or one of my sisters, could look through a window and see smoke pouring through the cracks of the privy as though the place might be on fire, nor did it soak through my mind that my breath would have stunk a dog off a gut-wagon.”

I don’t know what a gut-wagon was, nor does this passage encourage me to want to find out. Not firsthand, anyway.

Anyone with an interest in the American West will get a kick out of Fussell’s memoirs. Just remember to wear your old clothes when you sit down to read. You’ll have more than 70 years’ worth of dusty trails to cover. —Doug Bentin

Buy it at Amazon.

Mike Cox – author of THE TEXAS RANGERS: WEARING THE CINCO PESO, 1821-1900 – spent 15 years as spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, which means he got to talk to the press about, among other things, the Texas Rangers. How cool is that? Not talking to the press – no one in his right mind wants to do that. And I don’t mean the Texas Rangers baseball team, either. We’re talking about the real deal here: the Cinco Peso.

If you’ve never seen a Texas Rangers’ badge, where have you been all your life? They’re circular, not pointy like the badges you see in Western movies. The five-pointed Texas star is in the center. The badges were originally carved out of pesos, so the first Rangers to wear them were said to be wearing the “cinco peso.”

I grew up in Texas, first in San Antonio and then on the coast near Matagorda Bay. That was in the 1950s, the golden age of Westerns on TV and during the last hurrah of Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea and Audie Murphy in theatrical B+ oaters on the big screen. Just about every boy I knew was familiar to some extent with the big names of Ranger history: John Coffee Hays, Ben McCulloch, “Rip” Ford, “Big Foot” Wallace, Leander McNelly and Frank Hamer.

Now, I don’t expect those of you who had the misfortune to be born and raised somewhere else in the world – we thought that there were only two places: Texas and Somewhere Else – to know who these men were. But I can’t help but believe that you’ve felt an emptiness in your life all these years, as if there were some secret you should know but failed to discover. If that’s the case, or you’re just interested in fascinating history well told, pick up a copy of Cox’s new book.

Back in the day when the Republic of Texas Press was a leader in publishing books about the state’s history, Cox published with them a couple of volumes of Ranger anecdotes. This time out, he’s written a solid history of the organization’s first 79 years, from its quasi-founding in 1821 to the turn of the century.

The Rangers investigated their first murder in early 1823. Two men were beaten and stabbed to death, and then their bodies were dumped in the Colorado River. Rangers John Jackson Tumlinson and Moses Morrison had the case wrapped up – the culprits were two Spanish army deserters – in less than a month.

A year later, Stephen F. Austin had drawn up a set of laws for Texas, which was then a colony of Mexico. The first five articles dealt with Indians. Everyone in the colony was permitted to “arrest any Indian or Indians whose conduct justifies a belief, that their intentions are to steal, or commit hostilities or who threaten any settler, or are rude to women or children. … Offending Indians were to receive any number of lashes not to exceed twenty-five.” If a colonist were to “ill treat or abuse any Indian or Indians,” they had to pay a fine of $100 for the first offence and $200 for the second.” No wonder the Rangers have been stuck with a reputation for being less than tolerant in dealings with minorities.

Politically correct they are not, but I am fascinated by the wild-haired anecdotes that make up so much of Ranger history. In 1837, a group of Rangers set out to capture a band of 150 Taovayas, Kichais, Wacos and Kadohadachos who had raided a private fort. When the two groups met, one of the Rangers killed a Kichais. When he was reprimanded, he replied that “he would kill any Indian for a plug of tobacco. To prove his point, he held up a plug he had taken from the dead Indian.”

One of the Ranger casualties was a man known to history only as “Mr. Bostwick.” After being shot through the body, he loaded and fired his rifle three times, finally expiring during the act of withdrawing his ramrod from his gun. “Seeking comfort in gallows humor, one of the men suggested that they prop the dead Ranger up and let him go ahead and take that fourth shot,” Cox writes.

During a later fracas with Indians, an Irishman named Pat Moore sat on a bluff with a cartridgeless rifle aimed at the enemy. When challenged by his comrades with “What are you doing, Pat? Your gun is not loaded,” Moore responded, “Hush. Bejabers, they don’t know it.”

As Cox moves on in Ranger history toward the present, the documentary evidence becomes easier to find, but the tales don’t grow less interesting. The book is presented as being “volume one” of the Rangers’ saga, and here’s hoping it sells well enough to warrant publication of volume two. Cox is a good writer, with an easy touch, who is able to write serious history and still make it read as smoothly as popular history.

For all their faults, the early Texas Rangers were a colorful bunch of waddies, as tough as they had to be and a hell of a lot braver. Readers of Westerns – especially Elmer Kelton’s ongoing series about a Ranger family – will enjoy THE TEXAS RANGERS: WEARING THE CINCO PESO as much as they do fiction. And so will everyone else. –Doug Bentin

Buy it at Amazon.

Quick takes and capsule reviews from the dark suspense master himself, Ed Gorman!

Haffner Press’ THE WORLDS OF JACK WILLIAMSON is a massive, handsomely made book that is a centennial tribute to the writer Arthur C. Clarke put on a level with both Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. The book is also a tribute to science fiction and fantasy as well, because by the time he passed away at age 98 in 2006, Williamson’s history was the field’s history.

He did everything from the Gernsbackian “scientifiction” of the 1930s to comic strips to juveniles to adult novels that set standards for decades to come. Here you’ll find one of his swashbuckling “Legion of Space” tales; “Afterlife,” an example of his more thoughtful and elegant work; and, my favorite, the short novel version of “Darker Than You Think,” a stunning dark fantasy later turned into the novel of the same name – one that’s as strange and compelling as it was back in the 1940s.

With essays on aspects of Williamson’s work, and appreciations by Fredrik Pohl and James Gunn, this book is a graduate course in the history of science fiction. And a great read as well.

* * *

Five Star’s CRUCIFIXION RIVER is the first time Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini have collaborated on a Western. A powerful story of a confrontation at a stage station where passengers are holed up because of an impending storm, the short novel is told in brief segements by various travelers.

This has the deep emotional truth of a classic Ernest Haycox piece and yet is is enriched and improved by the superb talents of Muller and Pronzini. Revenge was never so chilling. And don’t just take my word for it: The short novel won the Spur for best Western story this year.

Several other stories ranging from traditional Westerns to appearances by Sharon McCone and the Nameless Detective fill out this fine collection that needs to be in every library, home and public alike.

* * *

Juno Books’ HOUSE OF WHISPERS by Margaret Locke is more proof that the publisher has its own special take on supernatural and urban fantasy. This is a haunted-house whodunit that works on both counts: The special effects are creepy; the mystery’s a good one.

Locke can write. The prose is nimble; the people real. With all the same old, same old going on in mass-market supernatural fantasy these days, it’s refreshing to hear a new and different voice and to get caught up in wry tale ably told.  –Ed Gorman

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF MARCIA MULLER:
• THE EVER-RUNNING MAN by Marcia Muller

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF BILL PRONZINI:
• SNOWBOUND / GAMES by Bill Pronzini

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF JACK WILLIAMSON:
• THE STONEHENGE GATE by Jack Williamson

As the third mystery novel in Steve Hockensmith’s HOLMES ON THE RANGE series, THE BLACK DOVE once again centers around two good-natured cowpoke siblings who go about “deducifying” just what happened. Now, before you think I’m poking fun at our commander in chief and get your knickers in a bunch (or get a smile on your face and a noddin’ to your head), don’t. This is how my boys Gustav and Otto Amlingmeyer “commence to conversating.”

The two brothers are second-generation German immigrants raised on the plains of Kansas, working as cattle drovers before being introduced to the literary wonders of Sherlock Holmes. Gustav – aka “Old Red” – and Otto – aka “Big Red” – decide to leave the range, head west and do some detecting work of their own.

This adventure drops the brothers into San Francisco – specifically, Chinatown. The pair – already ships out of water, what with Gustav still wearing his 10-gallon hat, Otto in a 10-ounce bowler and both sporting hair the color of a carrot – strolls into Chinatown on a bet.

With DOVE being a true-to-form mystery, I won’t spoil the fun, but rest assured, if you enjoy the genre seated in the style of Sherlock Holmes with some Charlie Chaplin thrown in, you’re gonna love this book. Old Red is the wise range cowhand who can track a chicken through a snowstorm, and puts his skills and keen sense of observation to work, just as his hero Holmes plied his trade. Big Red is your primary, Dr. Watson-ish narrator, and boy, does he like to jibber-jabber as they untwist the riddle that’s afoot.

I found Hockensmith’s novel to be very tactile. Chinatown in 1893 is as foreign a land to me as it is to Gustav and Otto, so it was a joy to watch them amble along those city streets. As the boys push through the death of one Dr. Chan, Hockensmith tantalizes you with a second internal story, by which a struggling Gustav is driven.

Hockensmith’s ability to poke fun at his characters throughout the tale kept me smiling and chuckling out loud. At one point, Big Red challenges Old Red’s detectifying skills and makes a bet with his brother. After laying out the rules of the bet, which seem straightforward but suspicious, Otto tells the reader, “Old Red gave me the kind of look you’d give a man offering to shake your hand after stepping from a particularly odiferous outhouse. But he didn’t say no.” That’s an image I could see burned into my brain, with a reluctance I fully understood.

Later in the tale, Gustav and Otto are left standing on the stoop of a sing-song house as they await permission to enter, their way being blocked by a very large Chinese hatchet man, literally carrying a hatchet. Otto likes to hear the sound of his own voice and lets the reader in on his personality: “Now, certain folks are heartbreakers, some break promises and others are ever breaking wind. Me? I’m an incurable breaker of silences.” Big Red proceeds to compliment the toughie on his black Chinese pajama-like outfit and questions him on where he could get one and do they come in different colors.

Along the way, the brothers receive help from some old friends and new acquaintances, and Otto gets his dandy new clothes rumpled a few times. The story fits together nicely as any good mystery should and it kept me pushing forward, deeper and deeper into the book, wanting to learn what had happened and whodunit.

If you’re a fan of the first two HOLMES ON THE RANGE novels, you won’t be disappointed, and if THE BLACK DOVE is your first foray into the series, you won’t feel lost. There are some references in the book to the predecessors, but as any good writer will, Hockensmith didn’t reveal too many details – just enough to make me go out and buy the other two so I could quench my curiosity and enjoy more time with the detectifying cowboys. –Bart Brunscheen

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• HOLMES ON THE RANGE by Steve Hockensmith
• ON THE WRONG TRACK by Steve Hockensmith

Brian Azzarello’s EL DIABLO has nothing to do with the El Diablo of DC Comics past. But it has everything to do with that writer’s reputation for dark, violent work. Over four issues in 2001, the 100 BULLETS creator told a weird Western tale that’s just now making its trade paperback debut. Is it worth the wait? You bet your guns.

Moses Stone serves as sheriff of a two-bit town named Bollas Raton. When he’s not keeping the peace, he’s chatting up the local bounty hunters, executing Apaches and trying to get his wife pregnant. But one day, the peace becomes much harder to keep.

That’s when Monkey Joe and his gang roll into town. At the saloon, they tell Moses of a “shadow” who’s been following them: a cunning sort known as El Diablo. Soon, this mysterious figure catches up, putting bullets through both of Monkey Joe’s eyes and slaughtering the rest of his crew. Moses himself is strung up in the bar, but left alive, with the word “Halo” carved into his back by El Diablo’s knife.

It’s a taunt, to have Moses meet him in the town where Moses grew up. So off Moses and his men go. Place your bets on how many will come back alive.

To say anything specific about the story once this journey gets underway would ruin Azzarello’s surprises; suffice to say, he has many, starting with the title itself. But oh, yes, there will be blood, as various characters are prone to fits of gunplay at a moment’s notice – and sometimes not even that slowly.

It’s the kind of dirty, dingy revenge tale you’d expect from him, and Danijel Zezelj is the right artist to bring it to fruition. Although his style sometimes makes it difficult to tell which character is who, Zezelj’s depictions of the shootouts are a thing of beauty, like the very best frame of a Peckinpah Western on pause. Of particular note is El Diablo’s initial appearance: a dark figure in the background, a blue headband the only color on him, standing amidst a blood-red background as his gun puts forth a horizontal line of six yellow Xs etched into the panel.

Don’t know why it took so long for EL DIABLO to see print again, but given the current wave of hard-edged Western comics – from JONAH HEX to THE LONE RANGER – it’s hard to imagine it having better company. Other than your shelf, of course. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• DOCTOR 13: ARCHITECTURE AND MORALITY by Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang

Because time isn’t always kind: economic reviews in a world full of waste!

Having already issued collections of Conan, Kull, Solomon Kane and Bran Mak Morn, Del Rey turns to a hodgepodge of here-and-there again for THE BEST OF ROBERT E. HOWARD, VOLUME 2: GRIM LANDS. Yes, you get various tales featuring the above characters – including my favorite Conan story, “The Tower of the Elephant” – but you also get lesser-known and non-series numbers of swordplay and sorcery, of pirates, knights and even boxers. Throw Red Sonya in there for good measure, and Howard’s bent for the weird Western tale is in full force as well. It’s nice to see these stories here rather than in overpriced editions, plus accompanied by beautiful little illustrations from Jim and Ruth Keegan. For me, though, the real find here is “Pigeons from Hell”; it may carry a trite title, but it’s a chilling horror tale. Cheers to Del Rey for putting Howard’s work back into widespread existence these past few years; all eight in the collection are worth owning.

If you’ve ever wanted to see characters from the Bible with big doe eyes, let there be light! Siku’s THE MANGA BIBLE transforms ye olde bestseller into a full-fledged graphic novel, moving quickly – too quickly, some will say – from the creation story to Jesus’ revelations in a tidy 200 pages. No doubt this will hold massive appeal to today’s manga-hungry teens, as it is true manga (except it doesn’t have to be read backwards, thankfully). The script by Akin Akinsiku updates dry text with present-day lingo; witness Cain and Able (“Whassup, bro? I’ve got something I wanna show you in my farm.” “Sounds interesting … what is it?” “Your death, you smug *$&%*!”) It’s not without humor – Jonah’s story is presented as a two-page “comedy short” – and works in present-day framing scenes to make the story relevant.

No allegations of Scientology tampering in this celebrity bio. Kathleen Tracy’s SACHA BARON COHEN – THE UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY: FROM CAMBRIDGE TO KAZAKHSTAN chronicles the maverick comedian’s rise from privileged scholar to British cult TV star to Oscar-nominated pop-culture tsunami. There’s nothing offensive about it, but nothing earth-shattering, either. It reads like Tracy just cherry-picked facts from People profiles and the like, which is both a blessing and a curse, meaning the read is an easy one, but also one that feels only skin-deep. The section on BORAT‘s filming and subsequent lawsuit-ridden release proves the most interesting; even though you’ve read it all before in countless news articles, it’s handy to have them assembled in one spot.

The digest-sized MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN VOL. 5: MONSTERS ON THE PROWL pits Spider-Man against four monsters from Marvel’s stable of horror characters. In stories written by Peter David and drawn by Mike Norton, Spidey fights Werewolf by Night in a haunted house, spars with Man-Thing in the swamps, saves New York from a newly thawed Fin Fang Foom and rids his school’s Halloween dance of the presence of Frankenstein’s Monster. Hawkeye and Dr. Strange guest-star in these slight-on-plot but long-on-fun tales. Intended for all ages, they’re not exactly scary, but hey, monsters are monsters. Consider this a pint-sized version of the recent LEGION OF MONSTERS anthology. –Rod Lott

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Saddle up, buckaroos, for the 90th installment of this column. We’re going back to the days when justice was served at the end of a six-shooter. So let’s hit the dusty trail and meet some good ol’ boys of the Old West.

ADAM STEELE #1: REBELS AND ASSASSINS DIE HARD by George G. Gilman – “Adam” appears on the cover in small letters, since he is mainly referred to as just “Steele” throughout this 1974 novel. Gilman also wrote the kick-ass series EDGE, which I’ve got nothing but love for. Unlike EDGE, the STEELE series is not some full-blown spaghetti Western in page form. It’s more of a slowed-down version of the genre, more in the vein of Sam Peckinpah.

The basic story opens with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the men behind the plot. See, four of the plotters figure it’s better to find a scapegoat to cover their tracks really quick. So in a bar, a man who happens to be Southern and minding his own business is lynched as a conspirator to the plot by the real culprits. The problem: The man they killed was Benjamin Steele, an agent who worked for Lincoln and father to our hero Adam Steele.

When Steele rides into town to meet his father, he discovers the truth and sets out on a trail of brutal revenge. That’s the whole plot as we follow him tracking down the members to inflict his own justice, while a former bounty hunter wants him dead.

This doesn’t have the same energy of the EDGE books, which are truly brutal and action-packed. This story takes its time with Steele, a man who does not care if he kills the wrong man. He figures he must have been guilty of something. Some of his ways of taking lives are pretty ingenious, but they have been done before in film. So if you’ve made your way through all the EDGE books, try a bit of STEELE. Just expect a slower build to the conclusion.

THE GUNSMITH #128: THE CALIENTE GOLD ROBBERY by J.R. Roberts – Roberts is actually longtime writer Robert J. Randisi, according to the copyright notice. How much he still has to do with the series is anyone’s guess. This 1992 installment is straight-up Western action – no fluff or padding. We’re talking the barest of bones for a finely taut adventure – the type I’ll be seeking more of in the future.

Clint Adams – aka The Gunsmith – is hired on by a female Wells Fargo agent to protect a shipment of gold coming into town. Like the LONGARM series, Adams has plenty of things to deal with: namely, guns and sex. The man can’t even take a bath in peace without having to defend a lady being accosted by three local toughs.

But that’s only the start of his problems, since his actions have already royally pissed off the local sheriff who sees Adams for what he is: a cold-blooded killer. He also has to deal with two men who’ve been following him around town since he took the job, only to end up getting into a gunfight. Then there are the ladies who are part of a never-ending revolving door.

But things really turn to crap when the train is late, only to discover it has been attacked and gold has been taken. This sends Adams and the agent down to Mexico to retrieve the gold and robbers. This is action I can get used to, since Adams comes off as the biggest prick of the West. Now that’s the type of hero I can support.

LONGARM AND THE BOOT HILLERS #34 by Tabor Evans – It’s the return of the marshal who shoots with both kinds of guns. This time out, he’s searching for a fellow marshal and a Pinkerton agent who went to a place called Antelope Junction, right in the middle of Mormon country. But unlike the rest of that area, this place makes DEADWOOD look like Chuck E. Cheese. Most of the time there, Longarm is being drawn into gunfights or sleeping with someone.

See, the local Boot Hill in the area has a weird condition that people who seem to be dead are not the ones buried. Everything is connected to the local saloon owner Bill Holloway, who’s greedy over gold. He has this plan to own all the land of the county so he can make a killing, knocking off anyone who might become an obstacle to his gain.

I enjoy these books, but this 1981 one was just way too padded for my tastes, with forays into Longarm bedding down two Mormon widows and the countless attempts on his life. It just feels as though the ghostwriter this time had to hit a certain page count before he could get paid. The story drags along slower than a dead horse in a race. There are plenty of action sequences to satisfy the readership with the usual amount of sex, but this is not the first LONGARM to start with. You’ll be disappointed by the lack of focus and fun the others have.

Next time: Death don’t have no mercy. –Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF TABOR EVANS:
• LONGARM #19: IN THE FOUR CORNERS by Tabor Evans
• LONGARM #48: IN THE BIG THICKET by Tabor Evans
• LONGARM AND THE LONE STAR LEGEND by Tabor Evans

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF GEORGE G. GILMAN:
• EDGE #2: TEN GRAND by George G. Gilman
• EDGE #4: KILLER’S BREED by George G. Gilman
• EDGE #6: RED RIVER by George G. Gilman

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF ROBERT J. RANDISI:
• LONE STAR LAW edited by Robert J. Randisi
• THE PICASSO FLOP by Vince Van Patten and Robert J. Randisi

THE TRAIL OF WHITENED SKULLS is a collection of five stories that all star one of Tom W. Blackburn’s forgotten characters, Cole Lavery. I have to admit I was never familiar with the work of Blackburn, except for the theme song of DAVY CROCKETT that he wrote for Disney. After a lengthy forward detailing Blackburn’s pulp days and his process of getting published, we are treated to some old-school Western action and fun.

Blackburn’s is more of the straightforward type of storytelling, with no unexpected events or out-of-the-blue character changes. All five stories are pretty much black-and-white, where the good guys truly deserve to win in the end, and Cole is a likable character – an Everyman trying to make his way across to California. His tales pretty much build upon one another into one continuing storyline.

In “River Raiders,” he’s a passenger on a ship carrying a large payroll for delivery to a bank. The captain asks Cole for his assistance in defense of the ship, should such time occur. We’re also introduced to a woman named Marta, who will figure into Cole’s life in later stories. She’s a singer traveling west to make a name for herself. The story moves along quickly with some nice action at the end. I won’t ruin it, but again, this is not some revisionist take on the genre.

Next, in “Commission Man,” Cole sets up shop in a town where it one of the big-time locals is also a bandit. Cole is set up to take a fall while Marta makes a return into his life, working in a saloon, yet desperate to escape her surroundings. As expected, the story builds up to its purely logical conclusion.

“Wagon Boss” and “Trail of Whitened Skulls” follow. They pretty much tell the same story, except with some key differences. When the first one was originally published, the editor changed the characters’ names of Cole and Marta, since he did not want to confuse his readers. So in the second story, Blackburn reworks the earlier one with some changes.

In the first, Cole and Marta take a wagon train to the West Coast. The problem is that smallpox has taken hold of some of the travelers, causing a rift, ending with Cole and Marta making their home at the halfway mark. In the second, Cole and Marta make it all to California this time, but along the way, they have to deal with some unscrupulous types.

Closing out the collection is the “The Curse of San Stefan,” which deals with an evil land baron who has taken over the whole area where Cole has finally settled. A group of men give our couple an ultimatum to leave or else. This is a no-nonsense tale of good vs. evil; you feel as though Gene Autry will at any moment pop up to help out. The story shows great character growth with Cole, that he’s a man of strong volition and character.

All of these hark back to the good ol’ Western tales of yore, where no matter what happens, the good guys will prevail. SKULLS is a fine diversion, spotlighting a writer deserving of gaining a greater audience. –Bruce Grossman

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Frank Leslie is really Peter Brandvold, one of the best writers of traditional action Westerns in the business right now. He’s very prolific — THE THUNDER RIDERS is the fourth or fifth book he’s published this year – and he may have concocted this pseudonym so he could saddle up with a new publisher.

I’d like to think he chose the name of an Old West gunman as an homage to Fred Glidden, who wrote under the byline Luke Short. “Buckskin” Frank Leslie is the man who shot Billy Claiborne – an OK Corral survivor – when Claiborne got pissed off because Leslie refused to refer to him as “Billy the Kid.”

End of lecture. Now close your books. There will be a test.

This is Leslie’s second novel about a half-breed prospector/adventurer named Yakima Henry. It begins with an older Arizona Ranger working with a younger one to track down an outlaw gang known at The Thunder Riders. They’re bad guys. Very bad. Rape-your-women-shoot-your-horse-torture-you-to-death-just-for-the-hell-of-it bad.

Yakima gets involved with these cutthroats through a series of mistaken assumptions. When the Rangers get themselves killed a U.S. Marshal named Patchen wants to arrest Yakima for the crime because, well, he is half-Indian and you know what that means. Yakima opens a can of whup-ass on Patchen and later, in town, gets himself in trouble with Sheriff Speares for showing too much interest in the lawman’s gal, Anjanette.

But the worst happens when The Thunder Riders – led by a sociopathic hard case named Considine – sweep through town, kidnap Anjanette and steal Yakima’s horse. Patchen has come to town and thrown Yakima in jail. Now, the marshal and the sheriff form a nervous posse and light out after the villains, Yakima stages a jailbreak and takes off after the posse.

From here on – and all this occurs quickly and early in the story – the book is all about the chase. It reminded me a lot of that wonderful 1966 Western movie THE PROFESSIONALS, as the useless members of the posse peel away and the real deals are left behind to track down the evildoers and rescue the gal. And, of course, the horse.

Leslie’s dialogue is excellent. He writes characters that talk like real human beings and not cardboard cutouts. The action is rapid and believeable. By that, I mean that when guns start firing, people can end up getting shot in places they don’t usually suffer in books and movies like this: Neck wounds, cheek wounds (the cheeks positioned just north of the neck), thigh wounds abound. Not all of these guys are dead shots. Close, but not perfect.

And Leslie lightens the load with some quiet humor. At one point, Patchen and Speares are rescued by Yakima, which they hate almost as much as they hate the guys who made them need to be rescued in the first place. Leslie writes, “Patchen absently fingered a raw buzzard peck on his right cheek. Of course, he was as much a fool as Speares, but Patchen had been a fool before, so he didn’t take it as hard.”

I’ve made the plot sound pretty straightforward, but it contains some nice twisty places so don’t think you can see around every corner. The surprises are well-timed.

THE THUNDER RIDERS is fun and fast. I’m glad I found it. –Doug Bentin

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Some 35 years after his debut, we finally learn about how Jonah Hex got to be the bitter bounty hunter we all know and love. Our questions – including the all-important “Just what is up with that scar?” – are answered in JONAH HEX: ORIGINS, collecting six more issues from DC Comics’ current revival series.

Spanish comics artist Jordi Bernet illustrates the three issues comprising the origins arc, and his ballsy, bloody drawings are a fitting and welcome addition to the title. Hex’s story is told in snatches and flashbacks, rather than chronologically.

As a child, he’s thrown into a pit of poop by his father. As an adult, he’s beaten severely by Union soldiers and left for dead. Somewhere in between, he’s raised by an Apache tribe after his father deserts him, and comes to be accepted as one of their own when he saves the chief from death by planting an ax in the neck of an attacking puma.

But someone on the tribe turns on him, causing a rift that will take roughly a dozen years for Hex to heal … by sheer, heartless revenge, of course.

In a two-issue arc called “The Ballad of Tallulah Black,” Hex takes a moment of pity on a woman who wants revenge of her own. The leader of a seven-men gang had shot her eye out, which somehow leads her to a drug-addled life of prostitution. That same guy comes a-callin’ to the whorehouse, slicing up her face and her lady business to where she looks like Hex’s equal in the ugly department. Under Hex’s tutelage, she’s not giving the gang a third time to do her wrong. Phil Noto demonstrates a real skill with the action scenes; his cinematic shootouts practically move on the page.

Finally, Val Semeiks illustrates a single-issue story that finds a woman named Delilah begging for Hex’s help in the forest. Some men armed with rifles claim she’s a member of their family; Delilah denies it, and claims they’re cannibals. Either way, blood gets spilt.

Co-writers Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray continue churning out excellent scripts that play to Hex’s strengths, which means plenty of black-humored, cold-hearted exchanges like this:

“You shot my pa!”
“You’re welcome.”

Highly recommended. You’re welcome. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS SERIES:
• JONAH HEX: FACE FULL OF VIOLENCE
• JONAH HEX: GUNS OF VENGEANCE
• SHOWCASE PRESENTS JONAH HEX: VOLUME ONE

I like Westerns in which an old pro – be he cowboy or lawman – is called out of retirement to perform a job only he can do. There’s always something special about the situation that calls for his skill or experience. It’s like a good Howard Hawks Western movie: one that puts an emphasis on professionalism, and defines a man by what he does rather than by what he says he can do.

Johnny D. Boggs’ protagonist in WALK PROUD, STAND TALL is Lin Garrett, a forgotten lawman who, in old age, has fallen on hard times. He was once an Arizona legend – or nearly so –, but now that it’s 1913, hardly anyone remembers him.

In fact, when his name is mentioned, listeners look confused and comment that they thought his first name was Pat. No, this is the other Garrett: the one who did his job and didn’t hire someone to ghostwrite a book about it.

Lin travels by riding the rails and one day, he finds a brand-new automobile parked at the train station. A visitor to town assumes Lin is a taxi driver and insists on a ride. Garrett decides to “borrow” the car just long enough to drive the stranger where he wants to go and collect a $3 fee. That’s how bad things have gotten.

Instead, Lin finds himself in a hospital and home for the indigent where he becomes reacquainted with his former deputy Randolph Corbett. The two old-timers spend their days together, wandering into town for a drink or two usually paid for by Ol’ Corb’s long, windy tales of the old days spun out for visiting dudes and their families. Even by 1913, the West recognized that its future was in tourism.

Then, after an incarceration of 25 years, outlaw Ollie Sinclair is released from prison and no sooner does he hit the streets than he recruits his brother, an old friend and some young hotheads to form a new gang, and they immediately rob a train. Lin, Corb and Ollie have a long history together, sometimes smooth and sometimes not so much. In honest work, they rode together and even after Sinclair turned outlaw the three shared friends and adventures.

Now for a variety of personal and professional reasons, Lin decides he wants to be the one to bring Ollie back in. Garrett put him in prison 25 years ago. He knows the aging bad man, knows how he thinks and what his escape path is likely to be. Corbett refuses to be left behind, so he and Lin reform their old partnership and prepare to light out. They are soon joined, against their wills, by Evan Paine, a low-level local lawman who thinks capturing the notorious Ollie Sinclair is just the thing to get him elected sheriff, and the trio sets off.

Boggs is one of the best Western writers around and if Westerns sold well enough to get some attention, he’d be better known than he is. His books are well-told standalone novels. His attention to historical detail is strong without being intrusive. I especially like the way he uses universal Western legend to add some authenticity to the narrative.

At one point, someone tells the story of the time Ollie Sinclair gave $600 to a widow so she could pay off the mortgage on her farm, insisting that when the banker showed up the next day, she should get a receipt. Ollie leaves the premises, the banker rides up, he gets his money and the widow gets her receipt. Then, on the way back to town, Ollie sticks up the banker and steals the $600. A listener to the tale says he thought that was Jesse James or some other outlaw. It’s probably a rural legend, but it adds an aura of the real West – the real legendary West – to the book.

WALK PROUD, STAND TALL is a good read, one of those books that seem to be telling the real story behind the dime novels. You won’t go wrong with this one. –Doug Bentin

Buy it at Amazon.