Tue 4 Apr 2017
Archived Western Review: CHARLES N. HECKELMAN – Return to Arapahoe.
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western Fiction[9] Comments
CHARLES N. HECKLEMAN – Return to Arapahoe. Fawcett Popular Library, paperback original; 1st printing, August 1980.
When Pace Barnes returns home from chasing Indians with the army, he finds his brother dead and their home in the hands of one Grady Chambers, a ruthless rancher responsible for a good deal of other trouble there in the foothills of the Rincons.
Heckelman’s prose is reminiscent of the type found in the type found in the adventures of the Hardy Boys, the 1930s version, to pick an example that comes most easily to mind, but overcoming all — or most — hurdles, it’s a kind of prose that nevertheless seems to suffice.
Here’s a tale that could easily be fashioned into an old-fashioned B-western movie, in other words, but (mercifully) without the usual comical sidekick.
PostScript: My brief hesitation there in the second paragraph goes along very well with my observation in the third. It concerns the absolute worst Western cliché in western-adventure books and movies ever. When I was ten years old, I thought it was a stinker, and I still do. It happens when two bad guys have the good guy trapped in a room, both of them with guns on him, and one ornery owlhoot says to the other, “All right, Lumpy, shoot him and let’s get it over with.” And the other says, “Hey, boss, not yet. I’ve got a better idea.”
Bibliographic Notes: Charles N. Heckelman (1913-2005) is not a big name as far as well-known western writers are concerned. I found a total of nine western novels offered for sale under his name online, one (Lawless Range) published as early as 1946, and there may be others. This led me to check out whether he may have written for the pulp magazines, and yes, it turns out he did: over eighty stories in the Western Fiction index, ranging in years from 1937 to 1955.
April 4th, 2017 at 9:31 pm
Glad I missed this one.
Though regarding your last paragraph, if owlhoots had listened to you a lot of Westerns would have ended abruptly and none too happily.
April 4th, 2017 at 9:57 pm
Yes, you’re right, and there’s no fun in that!
April 4th, 2017 at 11:19 pm
Heckelman is a name to avoid if you want to read quality western fiction. His short stories for the pulps mainly appeared in the lower quality western titles and almost not at all in the better magazines published by Street & Smith and Popular Publications (such as WESTERN STORY, DIME WESTERN, STAR WESTERN). I looked up his entries in Jon Tuska’s western encyclopedia and in TWENTIETH CENTURY WESTERN WRITERS (Gale) and they both are highly critical of Heckelman’s fiction.
April 4th, 2017 at 11:33 pm
I can’t dispute your low assessment of the western pulps that Heckelman’s stories were published in, and after reading this old review, I’m in no hurry to go looking for any of his other novels. I gave this one the equivalent of a “C” but this may have been a bit generous. I suspect that my suggestion that I found the book on a par with a B-western movie may have been as accurate as anything else I might have said.
April 5th, 2017 at 11:15 am
Biographical note: Heckelman was founder and publisher of Monarch Books, the second (maybe third) class paperback imprint under which scores of ppbos and reprints were published from 1959 to 1965.
April 5th, 2017 at 11:46 am
Thanks, Bill. I *knew* that Heckelman was either an editor or a publisher for the pulps or somewhere, somehow, but I couldn’t find a single reference to him in that regard anywhere, so I hadn’t mentioned it. By adding the word ‘Monarch’ to a Google search just now, I found a couple of very short newspaper references to him as such, but that’s all.
By the way, in doing that search, I discovered that his name is Heckelman, not Heckleman, as I’d had it all along, including the original review. I’ve made the corrections accordingly, including those in any of the comments. My error!
April 5th, 2017 at 12:39 pm
In TWENTIETH CENTURY WESTERN WRITERS Heckelman states that he was an editor for Thrilling Magazines in NYC. Also that he was editor in Chief of Popular Library paperbacks.
April 5th, 2017 at 2:16 pm
If nothing else, this tells me that I have to not only rely on my memory but actual in-print books, too.
April 5th, 2017 at 6:11 pm
I was just thinking. This book came out very late in Heckelman’s career. I wonder if it was written much earlier and somehow never published until 1980.