● FRANK GRUBER – Fort Starvation. Rinehart & Co., hardcover, 1953. Pennant P43, paperback, 1954; Bantam, pb, 1970. Filmed as Backlash: Universal International, 1956.

● BORDEN CHASE – Red River. Bantam #205, paperback, September 1948. Originally published as Blazing Guns on the Chisholm Trail: Random House, hardcover, 1948. Filmed under the paperback title: United Artists, 1948.

   Some time back I watched a modest little western/mystery called Backlash from 1956 where Richard Widmark goes looking for the owlhoot what left his Paw to be murdered by Injuns, with surprisingly dramatic results.

   Well, the credits tell us the screenplay by Borden Chase was based on a novel by Frank Gruber, but it took a lot of looking to figure out the book they were talking about is Fort Starvation (Rinehart, 1953) and it’ s interesting to see how it served as the starting-point for the movie.

   Gruber was a competent screenwriter, with films like Mask of Dimitrios (1944) and Dressed to Kill (1946) to his credit, but he never rose above competence, and that’s the kind of book Fort Starvation is: adequate but nothing special.

   John Slater gallops across the West sifting the ground for clues, re-checking witnesses, going undercover at one point with an outlaw band, and generally embroiling himself in a panoply of western cliches till Gruber arbitrarily decides to wrap things up with a “surprise” considerably less dramatic than that of the film.

   The characters are never more colorful than the black-and-white prose, nor deeper than the thickness of pulp paper, and while I’m glad I satisfied my morbid curiosity tracking down and reading this thing, I can’t recommend it to anyone else.

   After reading this, I picked up Borden Chase’s novel Red River, originally serialized in the Saturday Evening Post as “Blazing Guns on the Chisolm Trail.”

   If you’ve seen the film, the basics of the story are all there in the book, but Chase’s writing is nothing like the wry, laconic scripts he wrote for films like Winchester 73, Vera Cruz and Bend of the River.

   Here, the prose is overblown, straining to be poetic but barely approaching doggerel. I’ll grant it a certain fruity appeal, perhaps even an operatic intensity at times, but mostly it’s just hammy, and disappointing from a writer who put such fine work on the screen.

LUKE SHORT – Bold Rider. Dell 1st Edition #7, paperback original; 1st printing, 1953. Reprinted several times. Previously serialized as “Gun-Hammered Gold,” in the Daily News, January 17 through March 5, 1938 (according to copyright renewal records) and the Chicago Tribune (January 18 through March 5).

   My review not too long ago of First Claim (1960), also by Luke Short (and which you can find here) was not exactly negative, but neither was it positive, either.

   What I did say was that I was disappointed, mostly because of a well-worn plot (cowboy comes home from the war to reclaim his land, now held by someone else) and the fact that there were no twists in the tale along the way.

   I was not disappointed with Bold Rider, I can tell you that right now. There is plenty of action from start to finish, with definitely more than one thread to the plot, one which you will hard pressed to know which way it will turn next.

   Primarily, though, it’s the story of Poco St. Vrain, a chap who’s on the wrong side of the law, according to the law, and awfully handy with a gun, but he’s also a well-liked young fellow whose word, when he gives it, is as good as gold.

   And gold is the other part of the story. Two representatives of an insuring company are to act as guardians to a final shipment of the stuff from a mine perched at the top of a mountain, accessible only by a treacherous trail up its side, and all but deadly in the winter. But both men are dead, and their identification papers have fallen into the wrong hands.

   Poco poses as one, for nefarious reasons (well, it is gold, after all) and an even more despicable outlaw named Espey Cardowan pretends to be the other. Working independently — neither can call out the other, of course — they must work their way down the mountain again, together and in single file, carrying five hundred pounds of ore between them, and neither trusting the other as far as they can throw them.

   To make this small portion of the story short, Poco ends up in a snow-filled ravine with no way out, but then, out of the blue comes… And this is on page 45, with over 145 left to go.

   Poco makes his way out of this predicament, of course, you should not be surprised to learn, and he promises the daughter of the mine manager that he will retrieve the gold, a promise not easily kept as ruses, double crosses, shootouts, kidnapping, and a deadly runaway train stand in his way, not to mention the fact that Cardowan turns out to be the most vicious outlaw you may ever want to read about – being responsible for the kidnapping alluded to just now, and the runaway train in which all of the other passengers are dead (at his hand) or have been forced to jump.

   There is also the inevitable dance room girl with a heart of gold (there’s that word again), but Steamboat’s not your usual kind of dance room girl. She’s as good with a gun when it becomes necessary as anyone else in this tale, which I am pleased to recommend to you, without a single reservation.

HARRY WHITTINGTON – Desert Stake-Out. Gold Medal s1123, paperback original; 1st printing, June 1961. Reprinted at least once by Gold Medal; plus: Avon, paperback, 1989.

   Speaking of wasting a few hours enjoyably, Harry Whittington was a cut above the average paperback hack, and Desert Stake-Out is a cut above the average Whittington.

   The story of a lone rider bent on vengeance thrown into uneasy alliance with three outlaws and a callow married couple reads like one of those marvelous Boetticher/Scott westerns of the period, and in fact, Stake-Out is dedicated to Harry Joe Brown, the producer of that series.

   Whittington doesn’t break any new ground, but he plows the old fields affectionately enough to yield a crop. Hero Blade Merrick (I guess some folks don’t care what they name their kids) is appropriately terse and hard-bitten, the outlaws are well-realized characters who engage our sympathy even while terrorizing the good folks, and if the sexy heroine and her weakling husband seem a bit pat, they at least serve their function.

   Whittington (at his best) had a way with tight writing and fast action, and he serves this up entertainingly.

LUKE SHORT – First Claim. Bantam A2057, paperback original; 1st printing, May 1960. Reprinted several times.

   I was disappointed with this one. Short is one of my favorite western authors, but this slender book (only 152 pages) can be read very quickly – not so much because it’s short, but because there’s but a single straight line that can be drawn from the beginning of the story to the end.

   When Giff Ballew returns to his home town of Harmony to claim his father’s land that had been confiscated during the Civil War, he finds that it had been taken over by a family of rich ranchers who also own the local lawyer and sheriff, and who aren’t about to give it up now without a fight.

   Only the local newspaper editor and publisher is willing to lend him a sympathetic ear, and that doesn’t include the young, good-looking widow who works for him. Her father owes the Weybrights money, and she doesn’t want any trouble aroused by Giff to tumble back on him.

   Giff, of course, is stubborn, if not bull-headed, but he’s also in the right. Many of the folks he meets along his way are against him, but he comes also across a growing number who are for him and have not been able to speak up against the Weybrights until now.

   The characters are interesting, and they find themselves in very human situations. But for the most part, anyone who’s read a lot of westerns has read this all before. What’s there is tasty enough, but there’s not enough meat in this particular entree to keep you satisfied till breakfast.

RAY HOGAN – Guns Against the Sun. Avon T-453, paperback original, 1960. Macfadden, pb reprint, 1968.

   Although I own (and have cataloged) somewhere over 65 paperback westerns written by Ray Hogan, this is the first one that I can remember reading, which on the basis of Guns Against the Sun is my error – certainly no one else’s.

   And I suspect that the total output of westerns written by Ray Hogan would easily top the one hundred mark – he was that prolific during his peak years of the 1960s and 70s. He had one series character that I recall, Shawn Starbuck, a young cowboy whose wanderings across the Old West led him into many adventures.

   Only 157 pages long, Guns Against the Sun is barely more than a long novella, and it can easily be read in a couple of hours. Plotwise it goes something like this: when a gang of bank robbers hits Marshal John Banning’s town, they not only make off with a small fortune in gold, but they also shoot and kill Banning’s teen-aged nephew, his only remaining kin.

   The posse of townfolks that Banning takes with him doesn’t last long. Forced to follow the trail into the desert alone, he comes across a wagon heading west driven by a woman whose ailing husband is of no help to her, either against the heat of the sun or the outlaws Banning are chasing.

   That about sums it up, a minor piece of work in many ways, but Hogan’s eye for character as well as the desert country, brutal in direct daylight but unaccountably beautiful in the night time, makes this particular western rather easy to recommend. Brief but to the point. Hogan knows his West, all right.

ALLAN VAUGHAN ELSTON – Deadline at Durango. Dell 643, reprint paperback, 1952. Hardcover edition: J. B. Lippincott, 1950.

   A newcomer to the West bases his fortune in the cattle business on some semi-legal activities he carries out during his first days there, but as time goes on, he finally learns that he has to come to peace with himself.

   There’s lots of action, too, after a slow beginning, but guilt is what’s the underlying motivator here. (The girl from the East has a large part to play as well.) Well above average.

PHILIP KETCHUM – Gun Code. Signet 1686, paperback original, July 1959. Reprinted several times.

   Now that he’s grown up, a young cowboy returns to his home town with fire in his eye, ready to avenge his father’s death. Once there, however, he discovers that maybe, just maybe, all the facts he thinks he has are wrong.

   The author was a long-time pulp writer, and he did a few mysteries too, but file this one under T for Tepid. It’s all been done before, and far better.

MARVIN H. ALBERT – Renegade Posse. Gold Medal 826, paperback original, November 1958. Film: Bullet for a Badman, 1963, with Audie Murphy, Darren McGavin & Ruta Lee.

   What would prevent a posse, hot on the trail of a bank robber, from killing the man, splitting the loot among themselves, and claiming the money was never found? Answer: Not much.

   Mix in a deadly personal rivalry between the bandit and the only decent man in the posse, a band of bloodthirsty Kiowas, and you have an action-packed thriller from start to finish. Not much depth in the characters or the story, but there is sure a lot of shooting going on.

NELSON NYE – The Kid from Lincoln County. Ace Double F-184, paperback original, 1963.

   Westerns told in first person are a rarity, I’ve discovered, and I’m not sure why it should be so. This one’s told by a 17-year-old boy living on his own who comes to the rip-roaring town of Post Oak no longer willing to be pushed around by anyone.

   The result is a confused mish-mash of Western cliches and B-movie characterization, surprisingly so, because Nye has won the Spur Award at least once, and is a co-founder of the Western Writers of America.

NELSON NYE – Death Valley Slim. Ace Double F-184, paperback original, 1963.

   The story of a prospector who (apparently) strikes it rich, then tries to figure out how to keep the crooks in town from getting their hands on it.

   I don’t know. Pieces of the plot line keep seeming to occur out of thin air. The story that Nye tells, the story that he thinks he is telling, and the story I think he’s telling are often three different things. He’s got the lingo, no question about that. Maybe it’s me that doesn’t have the savvy.

[UPDATE] 05-06-10. Of these five, I think it’s clear that I enjoyed Deadline at Durango the most. I’m puzzled by my comments on the Nelson Nye books. I wonder if some of the problems I noted may be due to the editing that was needed to cram the two books into one back-to-back Ace Double.

TOM WEST – Ghost Gold. E. P. Dutton “Diamond D Western,” hardcover, 1950. Reprint paperback: Pocket #733, October 1950.

   I almost pitched Ghost Gold after the first few pages: the local bank is found robbed, a teller murdered, and a handsome stranger on the floor, unconscious, with the murder weapon in his hand.

   Well, it’s perfectly obvious he can’t be the killer, and equally obvious that someone’s going to walk his horse out from under him if he can’t prove his innocence. Looked like pretty standard stuff, and I didn’t feel like spending a whole book plodding toward the obvious.

   Fortunately, neither did the author, Tom West.. In short order our hero is cleared of the crime and on the track of the guilty owlhoots what done it. Which is also fairly standard stuff for a western, except that this one is peppered with a saucy supporting cast that livens up even a plot as stale as this one.

   West throws in a corrupt lawman with a stubborn streak, colorful heroine, drunken lawyer, doughty squatters, and best of all, a colorful detective, Scripture Sam, who goes about methodically collecting clues and sifting evidence in the best tradition, while mis-quoting the Bible and ventilating side-winders.

   Ghost Gold is worth reading just for this, but it also offers a few well-paced chases, gun-battles and a dandy wrap-up for the hombres. In all, a lively time and I’m glad I stuck with it.

Editorial Comments:   Tom West is not an author who’s remembered very much today, even, I suspect, by most collectors and connoisseurs of western fiction. But between 1944 and 1980 he wrote some 60 plus western novels, most of them as paperback originals, many by Ace in their “Double Novel” format.

   Of special note, I think, is the fact that he favored alliterative titles, ones such as Meddling Maverick (his first), Bushwhack Basin, Battling Buckaroos, Lobo Lawman, The Toughest Town in the Territory, and Bad Blood at Bonita Basin. Plus Ghost Gold as well, of course.

   I have a complete checklist of his westerns to post online, and I will, as soon as I can get to it, perhaps as early as next week.

AL CODY – Bitter Creek. Avon T-431, paperback, no date [1960]. Hardcover edition: Dodd Mead, 1947. Earlier pb reprint: Pocket #769, December 1950.

   When a one-armed Civil War veteran comes home to his ranch and fiancee, he discovers that both his ranch and fiancee have been stolen from him by a long-time rival. This is my favorite type of western story, I think, and this one has some sharply pleasing twists of coincidence to go with it. Tightly plotted, with many of the characters a solid notch beyond cardboard.

BRIAN WYNNE GARFIELD – Vultures in the Sun. Ace F-300, paperback reprint, no date [1964?]. Hardcover edition: Macmillan, 1963. Later paperback reprint: Bantam, 1987.

   Another common theme in western novels is that of the gunfighter who would like to quit and settle down, but can’t. In this one, when Ethan Scott agrees to rid a town of outlaws, he knows full well that when the job is done, he won’t be wanted around much longer. The story is moody and introspective, and it often seems static and unmoving, but the characters are strong and memorable. Good stuff.

LEWIS B. PATTEN – Home Is the Outlaw. Gold Medal #778, paperback original, June 1958.

   An echo of the preceding book, developed in a much more obvious fashion, and punctuated instead by almost constant action. Gunfighter Morgan Orr returns to his home town to try to make a new life for himself, only to find the woman he remembers no longer available, and a guilty secret ready to burst the town wide open. This is a violent book, but one that’s tough to put down.

[UPDATE] 04-16-10.   A footnote to these three reviews at the time says that I’d just purchased a lot of 600 western paperbacks, of which I’d kept 450 for myself. As I recall, until I obtained this lot, I hadn’t been reading westerns as part of my regular diet for quite a while — ever since the mid-1960s — so I was devouring them quickly.

   Also note how short these reviews were. I was going through a kind of writer’s block at the time, and I was forcing myself out of it by making my reviews as brief and concise as I could.

LYLE BRANDT – Justice Gun. Berkley, paperback original; 1st printing, August 2003.

   Lyle Brandt is another in a long line of pseudonyms for Michael Newton, author of over 170 novels, including many of the men’s adventure “Executioner” series, as by Don Pendleton. This is a western, though, and once you start reading it, it’s one you won’t put down right away.

   The first 60 pages are intense. Gunman Matt Price is found by a migrating black family after being left for dead; is nursed back to a semblance of health; and then becomes the savior in turn when the small wagon is accosted by a gang of redneck outlaws taking exception to the color of the Carver family’s skin.

   Refuge is found in the town of New Harmony, founded on the principles of equality for all. The doctor, who has her work cut out for her in saving Price’s skin again, is indeed a woman, which makes for two largely unlikely happenings (historically speaking) in one short amount of time.

   New Harmony is, as it turns out, under attack, and Matt Price may or may not be their protector and their champion. Unevenly told — the middle section sags somewhat — and rather linear in terms of plot, but the story’s ending has all the gunsmoke and action you could ever hope for.

Bibliographic Data Justice Gun is the second in a series of western paperbacks labeled “The Gun Series.” Matt Price, I believe, is the leading character in all of them.

    The Gun (2002)

    Justice Gun (2003)
    Vengeance Gun (2004)

    Rebel Gun (2005)
    Bounty Gun (2006)

   Also by Newton as by Lyle Brandt are the books in his “Lawman” series, the lawman referred to being US Deputy Marshal Slade:

    The Lawman (2007)

    Slade’s Law (2008)
    Helltown (2008)

    Massacre Trail (2009)
    Hanging Judge (2009)
    Manhunt (2010)

  MAN IN THE SADDLE.   Columbia, 1951. Randolph Scott, Joan Leslie, Ellen Drew, Alexander Knox, Richard Rober, John Russell, Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams. Screenplay: Kenneth Gamet, based on the novel by Ernest Haycox. Director: Andre de Toth.

  ERNEST HAYCOX – Man in the Saddle.   Little Brown, hardcover, 1938. Reprinted many times, in both hardcover and soft, including Dell #120, pb, mapback edition, 1946 (shown); Dell #618, pb, 1956; Signet, pb, 1972; Pinnacle, pb, 1988.

   Four years after Ramrod (reviewed here ), director Andre de Toth did it again. Columbia’s Man in the Saddle (1951) is based very closely on the 1938 book of the same name by Ernest Haycox, but it seems more like a re-telling of the earlier film, and equally noirish despite the Technicolor.

   This time, Joan Leslie is the woman looking to escape a shiftless father by marrying a cattle baron (played with chilling detachment by Alexander Knox) though everyone knows she loves small-rancher Randolph Scott, a circumstance that leads to Range War and the shoot-outs, bar-fights, stampedes, chases, et al. repeated from the earlier film.

   Haycox’s novel is an easy read, even if his prose lacks the punch of Luke Short’s and he really doesn’t invest the action scenes with much energy. He’s very good, though, at conveying the growing tension of an eminent shoot-out, or the suspense of a forthcoming ambush, and in these bits the book really comes alive.

   Writer Kenneth Gamet adapted this to the screen, and he managed a few interesting wrinkles while staying close to the book, streamlining the action and bringing some of the minor characters into better focus, particularly John Russell as a socially-challenged outcast, contrasted against Richard Rober as a genial killer.

   There’s also an interesting twist at the end as two antagonists resolve their conflict, only to find themselves trapped in their clichéd roles as Good Guy and Bad Guy. In all, an interesting variation on the earlier film, and fun all by itself.

   Someone also pointed out another common theme in these films: both Ramrod and this one, they say, carry sexual connotations. Being young and innocent, I wouldn’t know about that, but it’s an interesting thought.