Sun 5 Oct 2014
A Western Review: RAY HOGAN – Outlaw’s Empire.
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western Fiction[3] Comments
RAY HOGAN – Outlaw’s Empire. Doubleday “Double D Western,” hardcover, 1986. Signet, paperback reprint, January 1987.
Since Ray Hogan is a fellow who has written more than a hundred westerns, I’ll put off discussing his career until another time. He is a fellow who started out in paperback, however, beginning with Ex-Marshal published by Ace in 1956, but he didn’t make it into hardcover until Jackman’s Wolf (Doubleday) in 1970.
From the little I know of his work, I would characterize it as being in the realistic vein, workmanlike and solid, and that’s a decent description of Outlaw’s Empire too, with only a few quibbles. One of them being the title, which seems to have little to do with the book, and the cover of the paperback, which is extremely nice, but it also does not have much to do with the book.
Which is primarily a chronicle of the adventures of Riley Tabor, a wandering cowpoke who teams up with a fellow heading west in a grand army wagon, the fellow also being a grand womanizer – anything young in skirts – and therefore being considerably needful of having someone team up with him.
Quoting from page 23:
“Every chance I get,†Hale said promptly. “I believe in taking care of all women – married or single – as long as they’re willing, and most are. Spent most of my life working hard. No time for anything but work and study. Then I lost my intended wife in a fire. That changed my way of thinking. Figured life was just too uncertain, so now I pluck my roses whenever the opportunity presents itself – and so far it has been fairly often.â€
“That rancher back in Dodge just about ended all that for you–â€
“No doubt about that, and I’ll be eternally grateful to you for showing up when you did.â€
Riley made no comment.
Adam Hale’s life does end quickly, and in very strange fashion, leaving Riley with Hale’s wagon as well as everything else he owned — his rig, his horses, and all of his personal belongings – along with a huge surprise. A surprise big enough that I cannot tell you about it, given the possibility that by either chance or happenstance you find yourself reading this book someday. Suffice it to say that unearned surprises have a way of catching up with you, and that’s what this mostly amiable but somewhat rambling novel, full of interesting people, is all about – building your house on sand.
Or deciding not to, as the case may be. Not that Riley really has a good deal of leeway either way in the matter, which is perhaps why his story does not turn out all that badly in the end.
2005 (slightly revised).
[UPDATE] 10-05-14. Not having any other choice, but definitely wanting to show you the cover of the paperback edition, what I had to do was to take the black-and-white photo I’d included in that issue of Durn Tootin’ and colorize it into a monochrome facsimile of the real thing.
I also note that I was being so careful about not revealing anything about the big surprise I referred to that I have no idea now what it (and the book itself) was all about. I seem to have liked it, though.
October 6th, 2014 at 12:58 pm
After running this blog for what’s getting close to eight years, you’d think I’d seen everything in terms of what boxes should be checked off behind the scenes and which not.
I’ve just discovered that something went wrong, I don’t know how, and comments have been disabled on this review ever since I posted it. Reviews of westerns don’t usually get a lot of comments, so I don’t know if I missed any or not.
But just in case, if you tried to comment and couldn’t, I hope you read this and will try again.
October 6th, 2014 at 3:33 pm
For some reason every time I bought a book by Hogan it was part of his ongoing account of Mosby’s Raiders. I don’t think I ever did pick up a non Mosby western by him.
Workman like is a good description according to what I recall. Not bad, but standard western fare.
October 6th, 2014 at 5:00 pm
You’re quite right about Hogan’s Mosby series. There were about eight of them, and he wrote them fairly early in his career. The series I remember more is the about a fellow named Shawn Starbuck, who traveled the West searching for a lost brother, as I recall.
You and I discussed Hogan before, in the comments following my review of Hogan’s GUNS AGAINST THE SUN.
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=2035
I’d forgotten about this earlier review, even though I wrote it. I found it by Googling to see if I could find out how many Starbuck books there were. Back then, over four years ago, I said there were at least 24 of them.
Somebody suggested that I put a list together of all of Hogan’s output, but alas I never did.