SIX-GUN JUSTICE CONVERSATIONS
CHRIS ENSS
For the latest Six-Gun Justice Conversation ride along with Rich Prosch as he heads down the trail to talk with western author and current President of the Western Writers of America, Chris Enss. A scriptwriter and comedienne, Chris has worked with award-winning musicians, writers, directors, and producers, but her passion is for telling the stories of the men and women who shaped the history and mythology of the American West.
Streaming now on all major podcast platforms or by using the player below...
SIX-GUN JUSTICE SPEED LISTEN
THE LAZARUS MAN
The coffee is brewing and the biscuits are baking...It’s Monday morning, podcast cowboys, and time to saddle up for another Six-Gun Justice Speed Listen installment. Join Rich on the trail as he tells you everything to you need to know in under fifteen minutes about the 1996, TNT Western series, The Lazarus Man, starring Robert Urich as an amnesiac who may have played a mysterious part in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. This installment is streaming now on all major podcast platforms or you can listen by clicking on the player below...
Ohio native Merle Constiner came to Westerns late in his career as a published writer. First seeing his work in print in 1929, he decided to become a pro in 1939 after graduating from Vanderbilt. He created a fortune-telling con-artist/gumshoe The Dean for Dime Detective and Luther McGavock, a Memphis-based PI for Black Mask. Writing for the crime pulps kept him busy but he also wrote what he called historicals for Blue Book and The Country Gentleman.
And, a tip of the Stetson (and a free Western paperback offer) to the reader who can track down the title and Constiner connection on that 1953 live TV production. All I know about it for sure is that it happened shortly after MacMurray’s wife died so he muffed a few lines. But more info than that has proved elusive. So send me the answer and we’ll send you a paperback of our choice.
Constiner’s prose was nothing too out of the ordinary, and the plots weren’t overly unique. But with both books, I got hooked by the pacing and surprised by the characters.
So, for example, Killer’s Corral, (one half of an ACE Double with The Long Wire by Barry Cord on the flip side) is a revenge story about a former gunslinger who’s gone straight and sets out to track down the killers of Rann Clark the man who helped him when he was down. Rush Ledderman leaves his young family to re-enter a life he left behind, and I settled in for what I thought would be a by-the-numbers vengeance-trail manhunt.
But instead Ledderman faces the killers sooner than I imagined, turning the book on its ear and giving Constiner legroom to stretch into a tale that I didn’t see coming. Turns out Rush is more interested in proving the honor of his friend Rann Clark than simple revenge.
Ledderman is a surprising character because Constiner writes the best amoral moral character I’ve come across in quite a while. Not exactly an anti-hero as we might think of the term, super-saturated as we are, but similar in the highly personal brand of justice he dishes out.
So too, the protagonist in Steel-Jacket, Joey Fugate, is a young man with a tough background who falls for a golden haired gal named Amy Dennis. Fugate knows the Oklahoma Indian territory better than anybody, but that doesn’t mean finding the Dennis family’s stolen gold is gonna be easy—or at all safe. This one wasn’t as exciting as the ACE Double entry, so when I return to Constiner, which I will presently, it’ll be with Guns at Q Cross and Death Waits At Dakins Station, two ACE Doubles currently on my shelf.
Which is, what I think, part of the joy of collecting paperbacks and especially authors you’ve never read. Pull one down, read a writer for the first time and the shelf opens up to you.
