No matter where I go, no matter what city I’m in, I love to check out the bargain racks of bookstores, because you’ll never know what gems you’ll find. Most of the time, it’s a waste of time, paying off only in the low range of the statistical spectrum. While in Atlanta late last month, a B. Dalton mall store proved to be the unlikely site of a real find: GUNSLINGER AND NINE OTHER ACTION-PACKED STORIES OF THE WILD WEST by Ed Gorman. Some books hit the clearance bin because they suck; others because they have trouble finding an audience. This is an example of the latter.
To be brutally honest: If it had been a couple months earlier, I would not have bought this thin 1995 collection, $3.99 be damned. Because I thought I didn’t like Westerns. That was until I read Gorman’s genre-hopping DIFFERENT KINDS OF DEAD anthology and saw the amazing things he did with them. They weren’t standard, formulaic “shoot ‘em ups.” Nor were they tired or predictable. It was a real eye-opener, and GUNSLINGER only succeeded in stretching my peepers even further, CLOCKWORK ORANGE-style.
Like the award-winning “The Face,” about the horrors of war, or “Mainwaring’s Gift,” which offers a touching, sorrowful Christmas tale. Oh, there are showdown stories alright, but they’re given the Gorman twist; the titular “Gunslinger” is a revenger set in the era of the silent-film cowboys, with a mentally unhinged end, while “Guild and Indian Woman” is like an episode of DEADWOOD just waiting to be adapted. The bounty hunter tale “Blood Truth” may be the most conventional, but that’s not to say it’s formulaic. Like all the contents, it’s downright lyrical.
“Love and Trooper Monroe” is a tragic love story of a second-string Cavalry man assigned to shoot snakes and hatches a bizarre plan to win the heart of a girl no one else notices. But the real pick of the bunch is the contemporary “Pards.” Its protagonist is a middle-ager loner who writes articles for Western fanzines, and gets a crack at interviewing a screen hero from his childhood. Naturally the man he meets doesn’t hold up to his long-held image, but what he does not expect is how similar the two men are. It resonates with real heartbreak.
GUNSLINGER’s title is a slight misnomer, as one of those “nine other” stories is an appreciation of Roy Rogers movies written for Mystery Scene magazine. And then there is another brief essay, in which Gorman discusses writing the modern Western. Heck, it’s almost as thrilling as the fiction preceding it. A bibliography follows which is helpful, even if it’s hopelessly incomplete and out of date. Westerns themselves are just about as obsolete, but Gorman is one of the few today taking steps to keep them alive. And because he does so with imagination and emotion is why his steps sound louder than others. –Rod Lott
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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• 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
• DEAN KOONTZ’S FRANKENSTEIN: BOOK TWO – CITY OF NIGHT by Dean Koontz and Ed Gorman
• DIFFERENT KINDS OF DEAD AND OTHER TALES by Ed Gorman
• GHOST TOWN by Ed Gorman
• GRAVES’ RETREAT by Ed Gorman
• WOLF MOON by Ed Gorman
Related posts:
- BULLETS, BROADS, BLACKMAIL & BOMBS >> Go West
- Different Kinds of Dead and Other Tales
- Ghost Town
- The Adventure of the Missing Detective and 19 of the Year’s Finest Crime and Mystery Stories
- Showcase Presents Jonah Hex: Volume 1
