Wed 22 Jan 2014
BLACK MASK Review by Captain Frank Cunningham: B. M. BOWER – The Quirt.
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western Fiction[4] Comments
CAPTAIN FRANK CUNNINGHAM:
B. M. BOWER – The Quirt. Little Brown, hardcover, 1920. Thrilling Novels #15, digest-sized paperback, [1948]. Also available in several Print on Demand editions; a free ebook edition can be downloaded here.
This story of the cow country concerns the efforts of the Sawtooth Cattle Company, who number their cattle by the tens of thousands, to eliminate the smaller outfits around.
Al Woodruff, the evil eye of the Sawtooth, is efficient in his particular line of work, which is the reason why Brit Hunter of the Quirt ranch calls life in the Sawtooth country “extra hazardous.”
Hunter’s daughter Loraine, a city-bred girl, whose ideas of the Wild West have been obtained in the movies, arrives for a visit just in time to witness an incident of real tragedy, and in her ignorance of conditions she talks enough to arouse the ire of Al Woodruff and thus brings upon her father the neecessity of making a fight for his ranch and his life.
Action and adventure there are a-plenty.
January 22nd, 2014 at 2:16 pm
Most of you who are western fans already know that B. M. Bower was female (Bertha Muzzy Sinclair or Sinclair-Cowan, née Muzzy, 1871-1940). She was a prolific writer of westerns (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._M._Bower#Works), but somehow I’ve never gotten around to reading any of her work. Unless you or someone can tell me otherwise, this one seems to be as typical of her fiction as any other book she wrote.
January 22nd, 2014 at 4:55 pm
Actually as far as I can tell this sounds much more active than most of Bower’s books. The criticism of them usually has something to do with nothing much happening, especially in the Flying R series.
She was very good on the realities of ranch life, and equally good on the nature of the actual work and the stark beauty of the West, but her plots were more likely to feature a romance than action and she used the Easterner out West theme too often.
She’s worth reading, and was tremendously popular in her day, but the lack of action is largely why she failed to stay in print like Gray, Brand, Raine, MacDonald, Rhodes, or Mulford, her contemporaries. Still, in her day, she rivaled Gray and Mulford in popularity and sales.
This might be a good one to start with since it sounds a good deal more active than most of her novels.
January 23rd, 2014 at 3:07 pm
Bower’s work is enjoyable enough in small doses, but she does tend to be on the mild side for my taste. She was the great-aunt of Western writer Jory Sherman, who knew her when he was a boy.
January 23rd, 2014 at 7:03 pm
She also was married to another early western writer, Bertrand Sinclair. He wrote for the pulps also. Both Bower and Sinclair wrote several stories for POPULAR MAGAZINE, many of which I read.