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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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