WESTERN PAPERBACK ORIGINALS—RALPH COTTON

WESTERN PAPERBACK ORIGINALS

RALPH COTTON

Coming soon two new novels from Western wordslinger Ralph Cotton...

WESTERN PAPERBACKS—HELL'S CORNER

WESTERN PAPERBACKS

HELL’S CORNER

The pseudonym of Peter Field is almost as storied as the fiction released under it. Thayer Hobson,  eventual president of William Morrow and Company and publisher of Erle Stanley Garner and two time western novelist, originated the name for the first Powder Valley Westerns: Outlaws Three (1934) and Dry Gulch Adams (1934). Davis Dresser, who wrote Mike Shayne novels under the pseudonym Brett Halliday, would also write under the William Morrow house name Peter Field, as would Englishman, Fred East (who also wrote westerns as Tom West).

There must be a hundred and some-odd thousand Powder Valley novels by Peter Field starring the two-fisted hero Pat Stevens and his erstwhile sidekicks, Sam and Ezra.  After their William Morrow and Company debuts, many of them got second life as Bantam paperbacks and Dutton Pocket Books.  As recently as 1988, Avon was reissuing select Powder Valley adventures.  

When Bantam reprinted Powder Valley Vengeance, they changed the original  title to Hell’s Corner, which might have been a smart move. Not only did they increase prurient interest, but they heightened relevance to the actual story. (The setting is an untamed, unclaimed portion of Arizona called Corpse Corner—but like the Bantam editors, I like Hell’s Corner better.)  

It’s my first time with Pat, Sam and Ezra, and I don’t know who actually wrote this entry in the series. At first I was leaning toward Dresser who seems to have written the majority of them, but after reading Ghost Gold by Tom West, I’m not so sure.

In the first chapter, Field makes reference to Pat’s past adventures with lithe, dark Sam and burly, red-haired, one-eyed Ezra, and the book seems like an immediate sequel to a prior story. Pat has accepted a marshal’s badge in Powder Valley, something his footloose friends don’t approve of. In his raucous portrayal of the trio’s friendship, Field pushes all the right male adolescent buttons: I can imagine really latching on to the series at thirteen—or thirty!

I don’t believe Bantam always changed the Powder Valley titles when repackaging them. While the back page announces the availability of Land Grabber (originally Fight For Powder Valley), it also advertises Trail South From Powder Valley, apparently an original title. Most of the series is readily available in one format or other.

ABE Books easily lists more Powder Valley books than I could read in a year, and I found this one in fair condition, bundled with six additional pulpish paperbacks tucked away at an antique mall in Iowa.

WESTERN PAPERBACKS—THE SECRET OF APACHE CANYON

WESTERN PAPERBACKS

THE SECRET OF APACHE CANYON

RICHARD TELFAIR

Writing as both Richard Telfair and under his own name, Richard Jessup contributed a fair share of westerns to the Gold medal line in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Sometimes he delivered the goods and sometimes he didn't. However, he’s always great on a line-by-line basis, writing clear and descriptive prose. But, reading The Secret of Apache Canyon, I got the sense he was winging things more than usual.

Telfair pulls the reader in as an Easterner named Rogett meets with a scarred landowner to finalize an agreement over mineral rights. There’s a great air of tension and mystery, a sense there’s a strange backstory, including certain phrases that dare not be mentioned around the owner. There are also some marauding Apaches, a daughter whom no one is supposed to ask about, and a looming betrayal.

Telfair keeps everything steaming along for about half of the novel, delivering a score of exciting moments and vivid scenes of outdoor survival. Unfortunately, he never manages to deliver a convincing explanation for what’s actually going on, even when it comes out of the mouths of the characters. The final explanation, which is supposed to clear up all the mystery, still leaves questions unresolved and the reader, ultimately, unsatisfied and disappointed. If you turn off your brain it’s fairly exciting, but it’s hardly top shelf.

CONTRIBUTOR: HOWARD ANDREW JONES

WESTERN PAPERBACKS—WAGON TRAIN WEST

WESTERN PAPERBACKS

WAGON TRAIN WEST

WILLIAM HEUMAN

William Heuman contributed a number of titles to Gold Medal in the early days, many of which were reprinted. He’s capable of far better work than Wagon Train (1959), which is among the most paint-by-numbers Gold Medal westerns I've read. It’s principal character is Owen Starr, owner of a freighting company. Starr hates a mining town up north, but gets roped into taking freight there anyway. 

Heuman clumsily introduces a backstory about Starr’s kid brother losing his money and life in the mining town, then clumsily introduces various sub-plots that are telegraphed well in advance, including the upcoming betrayal, the unconvincing love triangle, etcetera. Starr himself isn’t much of a convincing character and the secondary characters are pretty much ciphers, apart from the half-Indian scout.

The plot all makes sense, at least, even if it was practically on rails and lacked interesting characters, and Heuman writes some strong action scenes, but the real reason I didn't flunk the book totally was because of the weirdly engaging and realistic details about wagon train logistics and operations—some of them far more engaging than the story itself. 

CONTRIBUTOR: HOWARD ANDREW JONES

WESTERN PAPERBACKS—REDEMPTION, KANSAS

WESTERN PAPERBACKS

REDEMPTION, KANSAS

JAMES REASONER

I’ve never been disappointed by a book written by James Reasoner because the characters, setting, and plot always ring true. Dialog and action are well balanced. The narrative, clear and straight-forward. It‘s all there in Redemption, Kansas, the first in the Redemption series.

It was my pleasure to discover the title on a rack at my local HyVee grocery store. Unlike so much of what I read, I didn’t learn about this title on the web before seeing it for sale. Instead, I just happened upon it—just like in the old days. A surprise that brought back one of the great joys of buying physical books in a pre-Internet world.

After an exceptionally hard week at work, I read the book in three sittings before bed. The house was quiet, the weather was good, and Reasoner’s slick prose reminded me why reading is my favorite pastime.

None of that would matter though if the story, a traditional western, didn’t rise above the typical formula. It does, because Reasoner puts familiar characters into new, uniquely dangerous, and suspense filled situations.

Injured Texan Bill Harvey, laid up in a Kansas town controlled by back-shooters Marshal Frank Porter and Deputy Zach Norris, is a stranger in a strange land. Not only did I immediately identify with Harvey, I also recognized the sheer improbability of his winning the day.

To paraphrase Lester Dent’s guidelines for pulp fiction—Reasoner piles the trouble on Bill—and just when you think he’s had enough, another load comes down. It’s great stuff that carried me through to a satisfying conclusion. Highly recommended. 

CONTRIBUTOR: RICHARD PROSCH

WESTERN PAPERBACKS—VALDEZ IS COMING

WESTERN PAPERBACKS

VALDEZ IS COMING

ELMORE LEONARD

A man can be in different places, different times, and be different men. Everyone likes slow moving Western constable Bob Valdez, who is allowed to patrol the Mexican part of town. He is a quiet man, a decent man who cares for the people he serves. However, when cattle baron turned gunrunner Frank Tanner and his hardcase thugs cause Valdez to kill a black man falsely accused of murder, another man, from another place and time, begins to stir. Seeking a lousy $100 to compensate the dead man's pregnant Apache wife, Valdez becomes a target of Tanners disdain. 

When Valdez confronts Tanner again to gently insist on recompense, he is beaten, lashed painfully to a wooden cross, and left to stumble awkwardly, pitifully, through the desert to die. It is then the lethal Apache hunter known as Roberto Valdez, the man from another place and another time, rises from the agony of crucifixion. Tanner and his killers treated Valdez with contempt, because they didnt know about his old cavalry uniform, his Sharps rifle or his Buffalo gun. Roberto Valdez doesn't care about the odds, doesnt fear dying and has a simple message for his tormentors—Valdez is coming.

Elmore Dutch Leonard wrote forty-five novels during a career spanning six decades. A superb stylist, Leonard was skilled in translating the themes, attitudes and structure from his early Westerns to his later critically lauded crime novels. As in Valdez Is Coming and Last Stand at Saber River, his heroes often appear weak and insubstantial. When pushed too far, however, their veneer of civility is ripped aside to reveal cunning killers with an unrelenting appetite for violence. Leonard's most popular character in this vein is Ryland Givens, who segued from his original appearance in Fire in the Hole to the highly rated FX cable show Justified. Dubbed the great American writer, Leonard also wrote Hombre, which is considered one of the top 25 Westerns ever written.

While the twist of the hunted becoming the hunter was not new, Valdez Is Coming plays out the cliché until its almost anticlimactic, but still satisfying, conclusion. Much like Hemingway's novels, the simple themes forming the substance of Valdez Is Coming, and many of Leonard's other works, mask a deeper treatise on honor and manhood, right and wrong, and standing against the tide. This deeper level is what makes Valdez Is Coming so satisfying. The story is more about human empathy than the standard Western ritual of blood calling for blood. Bob Valdez is the everyman. He finds pleasure in simple things, having turned his back on a violent past, "before I knew better," as he puts it. But the past is always with us, beneath the surface, waiting to damn us or save us. 

Leonard summed up his Ten Rules of Writing saying, "My most important rule is if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. I try to leave out the parts readers tend to skip." Acknowledging the influence of Ernest Hemingway on his writing style, Leonard was amused by being referred to as the poet laureate of wild assholes with revolvers.

Burt Lancaster originally planned to play Frank Tanner in the 1971 film version of Valdez Is Coming. Eventually, however, he wisely chose to embody the weary Valdez, the man driven to make one last stand. Lancaster is a joy to watch, every sunburnt crease in his face, every stoop-shouldered shuffle leading to his subtle transformation from sheep to talon-sharp bird of prey. As Valdez say, "You get one time, mister, to prove who you are."

CONTRIBUTOR ~ PAUL BISHOP