Tue 24 Mar 2009
Western Review: JONAS WARD – Buchanan’s Black Sheep.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Reviews , Western Fiction[8] Comments
JONAS WARD – Buchanan’s Black Sheep.
Fawcett Gold Medal; paperback original. First printing, February 1985.
I’m sure I read some of the first Buchanan books when they first came out, but since that was well over 50 years ago, I hope you’ll forgive if I don’t remember many of the details. In fact, you might as well say none of the details, and if you don’t, I will.
So when I picked this book up in a spare moment last week, it was as if I was reading about the character for the first time, and yet (as it turns out) it was the next to the last of the series. Which must have made Gold Medal a small stack of money over the years – a small stack large enough to keep bringing the books out, even after the original author died, a fellow named William Ard, who was probably better known then as now as a mystery writer, under his own name and a few others.
Science fiction writer Robert Silverberg completed the sixth one, Brian Garfield pinch hit for the seventh, then William R. Cox wrote all the rest. (For some more on Cox, go here to read my comments about a mystery novel he wrote, a yarn called Death on Location (Signet, 1952).)
Thanks to Pat Hawk, whose list of the complete series he posted on the WesternPulp Yahoo group, here below is the full Buchanan bibliography. Although some were reprinted later in various large print and library hardcover edition, each of the books appeared first as a paperback original. I’ve added the Gold Medal code numbers and the full dates, whenever I could find them.
WILLIAM ARD
The Name’s Buchanan. Gold Medal 604, 1956. Filmed as Buchanan Rides Alone.
Buchanan Says No. Gold Medal 662, April 1957.
One-Man Massacre. Gold Medal 742, February 1958.
Buchanan Gets Mad. Gold Medal 803, 1958.
Buchanan’s Revenge. Gold Medal 951, January 1960.
WILLIAM ARD & ROBERT SILVERBERG
Buchanan On the Prod. Gold Medal 1026, August 1960.
BRIAN GARFIELD
Buchanan’s Gun. Gold Medal D1926, 1968.
WILLIAM R. COX
Buchanan’s War. Gold Medal R2396, March 1971.
Trap for Buchanan. Gold Medal T2579, 1972.
Buchanan’s Gamble. Gold Medal T2656, January 1973.
Buchanan’s Siege. Gold Medal T2773, August 1973.
Buchanan on the Run. Gold Medal M2966, May 1974.
Get Buchanan! Gold Medal M3165, December 1974.
Buchanan Takes Over. Gold Medal M3255, May 1975.
Buchanan Calls the Shots. Gold Medal M3429, December 1975.
Buchanan’s Big Showdown. Gold Medal 13553, 1976.
Buchanan’s Texas Treasure. Gold Medal 13812, 1977
Buchanan’s Stolen Railway. Gold Medal 13977, 1978.
Buchanan’s Manhunt. Gold Medal 14119, 1979.
Buchanan’s Range War. Gold Medal 14357, July 1980.
Buchanan’s Big Fight. Gold Medal 14406, May 1981.
Buchanan’s Black Sheep. Gold Medal 12412, February 1985.
Buchanan’s Stage Line. Gold Medal 12847, March 1986.
As for Black Sheep, the one I read last week, Tom Buchanan, whose travels have taken him all over the West, takes sides in still another range war in this one, this time on the side of a sheep rancher and his family.
On the other side, a big cattleman intent on running the little guy off the land with any means he sees fit, either fair or foul, mostly foul – in terms of hired gunmen who also think that taking Buchanan down will mean a big boost to their reputation.
That’s the story in a nutshell, but of course there’s a lot more to it than that. Cox, which is how I’ll refer to the author, is interested in characters, and not only in the major players going head to head over the grasslands, but the women involved, of whom there quite a few, and the Indians – both those who ride renegade against both sides, but others also who for reasons of their own have taken allegiance with the sheepman and his family.
Siding with Buchanan is his companion – over the course of several/most/all of the books? – a black man named Coco Bean and a good person to have next to you in a fight, whether in the squared circle or on the open plains.
There is little action for most of the book, only a few small scattered (but often deadly) skirmishes. Buchanan tries his best to end the impasse without gunplay, but with cattle rancher Jake Robertson egged on by his own ego — as well as an outside factor or two — resolving the matter peacefully proves to be next to impossible.
And in the end, gunplay is what ends (and saves) the day – fast, furious and fatal for many of the participants – but I have a feeling that it may have come too late for many readers of the day, who may have become impatient with too much palavering and the romantic subplots, which are fine as far as they go, but neither are the characters quite deep enough to make this literature as well as a pretty good old-fashioned western.
March 26th, 2009 at 1:19 am
William Ard was one of the brighter lights of the hardboiled mystery genre in the 1950’s. Though he wrote under a few pseudonyms and created other characters, his books about Black Irish private eye Timothy Dane were probably his best, written less in the popular Chandler/Maddonald vein than the third person voice of Hammett’s Sam Spade, Kurt Steel’s Hank Heyer, Geoffrey Homes Humphrey Campbell, and Brett Halliday’s Michael Shayne.
It’s been a while since I read them, but the Dane books were well plotted with good action set pieces as well as mystery plot. Dane was among the tougher sleuths of the era; good with his fists and his brains. Only two titles stick in my mind off hand, .38, and Hell is a City, the latter yet another in the long line of hardboiled novels modeled on Hammett’s Red Harvest (Macdonald’s Blue City, Cleve Adams Private Eye, Halliday’s Murder in a Mummer’s Mask, Ballard’s Murder in Las Vegas and so on …).
Ard also wrote as Ben Kerr, Mike Moran, and Thomas Wills, and series sleuths include Lou Largo and Danny Fontaine, Make Mine Murder(1961), a Lou Largo mystery, was ghosted by John Jakes.
It’s been so long since I read the Buchanan books I should probably dig them out and enjoy them afresh. They were one of the better western series and of course the basis for a good Randolph Scott movie Buchanan Rides Alone directed by Budd Boetticher with Craig Stevens, Barry Kelly, and Peter Whitney. I don’t know if that was scripted by Burt Kennedy or not (seems likely, I’m sure someone will look it up) and as you point out based on the first book in the series.
There was another western series at Gold Medal I recall. I can’t remember the writer, but wasn’t the hero Amos Flagg, and the series modeled on television’s Gunsmoke? That sounds familiar, but as I said I haven’t thought of them in years.
March 27th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Since I’ve never seen the movie Buchanan Rides Alone, I’ve been waiting for someone who has to leave a comment about it — to no avail, so far.
Since I read the book without the movie in mind, I confess that my mental picture of Tom Buchanan didn’t look much like Randolph Scott. Maybe a young Gary Cooper, to my way of thinking — someone that does taciturn well and whose acting is always understated.
But Scott can do that too, so I think he may have been a good choice.
As for Amos Flagg, Clay Randall was the author, and I believe there were six in the series, but I haven’t had the chance to double check that. The Flagg books were published first as Gold Medal’s, but Belmont reprinted at least some of them later on.
I seem to remember that Clifton Adams wrote some books as by Clay Randall, but even if that happens to be true, I don’t know if he also did the Amos Flagg books.
— Steve
March 27th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
As far as I know, all the Clay Randall books (the Amos Flagg series and a few stand-alones) are all by Clifton Adams. The Amos Flagg novels are somewhat similar to Gunsmoke, as I recall, but only in the same sense that any town-set Western series with a lawman as the central character would be.
March 27th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Thanks, James! I’ll think what I ought to do is to put a checklist of the Amos Flagg books together — maybe even sooner rather than later….
March 27th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
I’ve seen the movie “Buchanan Rides Alone” several times, but never read the book, or anything by William Ard.
“Buchanan Rides Alone” is a complex, satirical film about a really corrupt, two-bit Western town. It is full of subtle comments on society, corruption, race, sex and other hot button issues.
March 27th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Buchanan Rides Alone is a key film in the group of films Budd Boettticher did with Randolph Scott in the late 1950’s, and as Mike said somthing of a comment on society as a whole. There’s nothing new about the newcomer riding into town and ending up cleaning the place up, but Buchanan goes about it in a singularly tough minded manner. The character played by Scott in these films is a good man who has been driven by circumstance to become hard and while he carefully guards a nugget of his humanity beneath that tough exterior he can be ruthlessly violent and even brutal when it’s warranted.
Because Buchanan Rides Alone is the first of a series of books and the character a sort of drifer there is less backstory than usual in a Boetticher film. Buchanan would seem to be just another drifting cowboy looking for work — until someone pushes him the wrong way. At that point it becomes clear just how far the Scott hero will go to restore what he considers his personal honor. In some ways his Buchanan has some relation to John D. MacDonald’s later Travis McGee, particularly in The Green Ripper. Once he has unleashed the man beneath the surface someone is going to pay in blood before he resumes his easy going facade.
That’s true of most western (and other) heroes but Scott and Boetticher together so refined and perfected the Scott persona in these that they develop a sort of cinematic shorthand, a gesture, a look, a single word, that says more than pages of expositionary dialogue and background in other films. In some ways Scott’s take on the iconic western loner is the dominant one in the western imagination however important the Gary Cooper, John Wayne, or even Clint Eastwood model. Likely the truest moment in Mel Brooks Blazing Saddle is when the townfolk remove their hats reverently at the mere mention of Randolph Scott’s name.
Barry Kelly is the corrupt town boss and Craig Stevens (just before Peter Gunn) a smooth gunfighter. There is nothing unusual in the plot, but the writing and direction are superior as would be expected in a Boetticher film and while the plot may be tried and true the approach to character makes this one notable. The surprizing thing about the Boetticher films is that while they are set against the wide open spaces of the west they are closely focused character studies of men under stress, particularly the Scott hero, who reveals depths of feeling and humanity with little more than a pained look or by holding himself a little apart from everyone else in the film.
Like Steve I imagined the Buchanan of the books as more along the lines of Gary Cooper, but Scott at this time was at the height of his appeal and his take on Buchanan combined a gentle charm that could turn to steel with a glint of his narrow eyes. And it isn’t as if there weren’t close bonds between Scott and Cooper. Scott got his start in Hollywood as Coooper’s dialogue coach for The Virginian and replaced Cooper in the popular Zane Gray series of films. By the time he made the series of films with Boetticher his version of the western hero was almost as iconic as Coopers, though it has only been in recent years he’s gotten real credit as an actor in them.
At first glance Buchanan Rides Alone only seems to be a superior product of the heyday of the adult western, but there is more to the Scott character and to Boetticher’s direction than there may seem to be on the surface. In the confines of a fairly common western story Boetticher is commenting on both contemporary American society, and also saying something about the idealised American character. Scott’s hero in these films is the man who does the right thing even when it’s messy and society might prefer that he look the other way. Once he is unleashed he will have a reckoning, whatever the price.
March 27th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
[…] latter came up recently in the comments following my review of one of the Buchanan books, a series also published by Gold Medal as paperback […]
March 28th, 2009 at 11:07 am
In the UK the book One-Man Massacre had a title change to Buchanan Gets Tough.