Sat 27 Nov 2021
A Western Fiction Review by Dan Stumpf: LUKE SHORT – The Whip.
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western Fiction[4] Comments
LUKE SHORT – The Whip. Bantam #1668, paperback original, 1957. Reprinted by Bantam several times. Also: Dell, paperback, 1992. Previously published as a magazine serial; see below.
A short note after the copyright page tells us the first two-thirds of this was serialized in Colliers until that magazine went out of business, then the remainder was picked up by The Saturday Evening Post as a tribute to a fallen competitor. And to finish off a crackling fine yarn. (**)
Said yarn is of Will Gannon, the kind of tough westerner best suited to books like this, who, as the story opens, commandeers a stagecoach from a drunken driver, gets it safely to town, and ends up appointed District Manager of a stretch of road rife with robbery, murder, slack discipline and bad food.
The charm of this book is Luke Short’s ability to sketch out a tale of sudden violence against a background of the day-to-day work of running a business. He fills it in with a well-drawn cast of characters — mostly standard Western types, but well-drawn as such — and a convincing landscape for horses and men to travel and battle in.
But as I say, what makes The Whip work is the balance Luke Short strikes between Gannon’s workaday chores and the escalating violence engineered by the ne’er-do-wells he’s replaced. Short builds carefully, effectively, to a prolonged chase and a grim conclusion that rings true.
Definitely one for Western fans to check out!
___
(**) Steve and I have identified the first two parts of the three part serial:
“Doom Cliff,” (serial) Collier’s Dec 21 1956, Jan 4 1957 [last issue]
But the third and final installment supposedly published in The Saturday Evening Post has eluded us. Is the statement in the paperback edition incorrect? Have we missed something?
UPDATE: Mystery solved, thanks to the very kind assistance of pulp master Sai Shankar. See Comment #3.
November 27th, 2021 at 12:27 am
Short had a clipped straight forward way of telling a story that is close to the hardboiled voice and it is no surprise many films of this work are close to Western noir (BLOOD ON THE MOON, STATIONS WEST, RAMROD).
As pointed out his work was often rooted in details of actual work from running a stage line to working a ranch or even a newspaper and it gave a weight to his stories missing in many of his rivals works.
Short built suspense and action like the best mystery writers from the hardboiled school and it showed in his thoughtfully constructed novels which tended to be lean and to the point with little extraneous or unneeded material.
November 27th, 2021 at 12:38 am
Luke Short has the honor of being the author of the first full length western novel I ever read. It was the Dell paperback of KING COLT, and (obviously) I’ll never forget it.
I’ve neglected his book badly in recent years. It’s a good thing there’s still time to remedy that.
November 27th, 2021 at 8:20 am
Luke Short fan checking in here. The last part of Doom Cliff was indeed published in the Saturday Evening Post in the Feb 9, 1957 issue.
Whoever indexed the issue for FictionMags likely missed it because the Post classified in in the table of contents as a Special Feature. Although, peculiarly, a couple of non-fiction articles in the same issue are indexed and this one is missing.
November 27th, 2021 at 9:03 am
Thanks, Sai. I was really stumped with this one. FictionMags was the only source I had, and this time it failed me. I’ll let Phil S-P know and I’m sure he’ll get it fixed right away.