Thu 6 May 2010
Five Archived Western Reviews: ELSTON, KETCHUM, ALBERT & Two By NYE.
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western Fiction[8] Comments
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.
May 6th, 2010 at 10:05 pm
Somehow, even though I knew his name I never read any of Elston’s books. Sounds as if I will have to correct that.
Marvin Albert’s westerns are mostly like this, damn good reads, but not a lot of depth. Not that it matters because he gets all the rest right — action, character, and plot. Like his mysteries he wasn’t a deep writer, but more than capable, and his books seemed designed for films, and often made good ones, just as he often wrote film novelizations.
I don’t know why the dearth of first person western narratives. I can think of a few by Louis L’Amour and Will Henry, and if you can find it Carroll John Daly’s TWO GUN GERTA is fun, almost Race Williams cowboy.
Westerns with a more historical bent tend to be written in the first person ( SHANE, THE TRAVELS OF JAIMIE MACPHEETERS), but more standard ones tend not to be.
I wonder if it is because the first person voice generally demands a greater knowledge of the period and offers more chances of anachronisms sneaking in (but then historical novels tend to be more likely to be written in the first person)?
Oddly, what I think of as frontier novels rather than westerns are more likely to be written in the first person. And in a broad generalization more literary westerns are likely to be written in the first person while the standard pulp and paperback western tends to be in the third person.
But if I had to guess I would think the first person voice offered more pitfalls for western writers, and then too most of the classics — Gray, Brand, Mulford, Tuttle tend to be written in the third person. It may be as simple as that, just as the first person voice ended up dominating the hard boiled school because it was so common to Hammett, Chandler, and Daly and later Spillane and Macdonald. Fewer writers followed the model of Hammett’s Sam Spade, Latimer’s Bill Crane, or Brett Halliday’s Michael Shayne.
I recall a fairly good mystery by Ketchum, and never really got into Nye, but agree the Ace Double format here may well be the cause of the problems.
May 7th, 2010 at 6:47 am
Steve,
Allan Vaughan Elston wrote a few “pure” mystery stories, some of which are of high quality. (Although most of his books are Westerns.)
There is a discussion of some of these on my web site:
http://mikegrost.com/blochman.htm#Elston
I’ve only read a few pulp mystery short stories by Philip Ketchum. Have always found them disappointing – dull, uninventive. Your description of him as Tepid seems dead-on.
May 7th, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Nye was quite a character – I was at a mass signing with him during a Western Writers of America convention back in ’95, late in his life – but I confess I haven’t been that fond of the few books of his I’ve read. Haven’t read a lot of Elston, either, but what I’ve read I thought was pretty good. However, I feel the same way about Ketchum’s work. Albert was always readable to excellent. I picked up a World War II thriller by him today that I’d never heard of.
May 7th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Mike
You surprised me. I wouldn’t have thought to have looked for Elston on your website, so thanks for steering me over your way. I knew he wrote only the one mystery novel; I hadn’t known about his short stories, but if wrote them for the mainstream magazines (or slicks, perhaps), I’m sure that explains why.
It’s one big reason I do this blog. I learn something everyday, and usually more than that.
James
If you’re not especially fond of Nelson Nye’s books either, then I don’t feel so badly in thinking I’m missing something when I read them. He was a Guest of Honor one year at Pulpcon shortly before he died, and he was an absolute pleasure to talk to. I’m glad I had the chance.
I’d have to read more of Ketchum before saying more. I do know that GUN CODE must have been a good seller for Signet, since they reprinted it seven or eight times.
He was a tremendously prolific writer for the pulp magazines, mostly western and detective stories, but he’s also well-known (in pulp circles) for several historical adventure stories in what’s called his “Bretwalda” series. I believe they takes place during the time of the Vikings, but since this is about all I know, I’d better stop here.
This will allow someone else to fill in more of the details, and correctly, too.
— Steve
May 7th, 2010 at 3:44 pm
I always thought of Nye and Ketchum as mid level writers — never really excelling, but turning out average to good books that were readable if not great reads.
Albert remains an old favorite across the board in whatever genre he chose to work in whether it was his series of Alistair MacLean style novels as Ian McAlister, his Tony Rome books, Nick Quarry titles, his Stoned Angel books, or his many westerns. He also did better than average movie novelizations — everything from THE PINK PANTHER to THE UNTOUCHABLES and even a couple of Doris Day/Rock Hudson films. He even managed a few big thrillers late in his career. He’s one of those writers whose works I just pick up when I see the name knowing I’ll probably enjoy the book when I read it.
And not a bad screenwriter either.
May 7th, 2010 at 5:35 pm
Steve,
I ALWAYS learn things from reading your blog!
For years have had a paperback of Deadline at Durango – the same one shown above. Keep meaning to read it – have never read any of Elston’s Western novels. And know little about Western fiction, unfortunately.
I like the few Merle Constiner Westerns with detective elements read here. They are really good.
May 7th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
I’m glad Mike Grost mentions Merle Constiner, an excellent and almost forgotten writer. Even better than his westerns are his novelets in DIME DETECTIVE and BLACK MASK. Battered Silicon Dispatch Box has already published the 19 long novelets starring The Dean in one enormous collection. At Windy City I was talking to the publisher, George Vanderburgh and he intends to reprint all 11 Constiner novelets from BLACK MASK starring private eye Luther McGavock.
May 8th, 2010 at 6:31 am
Okay, Nelson Nye wrote A BULLET FOR BILLY THE KID, which I rather liked. Don’t know if it’s the same as THE KID FROM LINCOLN COUNTY, though.