Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Complete Western Book Magazine, August 1950

Norman Saunders provides his usual action-packed cover on this issue of COMPLETE WESTERN BOOK MAGAZINE, and as an added bonus, we get another appearance of that iconic trio: the stalwart cowboy (you can tell he's stalwart, he's wearing a red shirt), a beautiful redhead (looks more frightened than angry, but she's definitely gun-toting, although her iron is still pouched), and a beleaguered old geezer (not wounded but in recent danger of being lynched, by the looks of it). And isn't the old geezer a dead ringer for Sam Elliott? Saunders was prescient. There are only three stories in this issue, but they're by good authors: Frank P. Castle, Rod Patterson, and John Callahan. Appears to be well worth reading. I don't own a copy and scans don't appear to be on-line, but I can admire the cover.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, December 1954

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my taped, trimmed, and tattered copy in the scan, but other than being beat up, it’s intact and fully readable. The cover art is by Sam Cherry, as usual during this era of TEXAS RANGERS. It’s not one of his better covers, in my opinion, but it’s certainly not bad. I don’t think Cherry was capable of painting a bad cover.

The Jim Hatfield novel in this issue, “El Diablo’s Treasure”, is by Roe Richmond. I’ve mentioned many times in the past that Richmond’s Hatfield novels aren’t really to my taste, but I read one now and then anyway because he was a pretty good writer otherwise. This one starts out very promising. Hatfield is in Del Rio, on the Texas-Mexico border, and is already in the middle of his current assignment. He’s supposed to accompany a famous archeologist, the man’s beautiful daughter, and a young mining engineer who’s engaged to the girl, as they search for a famous lost mine in the Sierra Madre of Mexico. Not only is there the potential for gold, but the mine also is supposed to be the hiding place for a fortune in gems left there a couple of hundred years earlier.

Unfortunately, the arrangement with Mexico calls for the party to be escorted by a troop of Rurales commanded by an officer who is actually little more than a bandit, and there’s a gang of actual bandits roaming the area where the search is to take place. Throw in the fact that the archeologist’s daughter is a beautiful hellcat with her eye on Hatfield, angering her fiancée, and there’s plenty going on to wind up with Hatfield getting plenty of trouble heaped on his head.

That’s exactly what happens, as Richmond provides plenty of gritty, well-written fistfights, shootouts, and even some epic battles. There’s quite a bit to like in this novel. However, Richmond makes a serious misstep by never providing any sort of interesting backstory for the fortune that’s supposed to be hidden in the mine. It’s just sort of there, with a couple of vague hints that maybe the Conquistadores left it. There’s also no mention of anyone known as El Diablo, let alone an explanation of why it’s his treasure. Was Richmond simply referring to the Devil? Who knows?

My main objection to Richmond’s Hatfield novels is the presence of the annoying sidekicks he introduced to the series. Hatfield is called the Lone Wolf for a reason! Thankfully, although those characters are mentioned once, they play no part in this novel.

Ultimately, “El Diablo’s Treasure” isn’t a bad yarn. But Richmond shares something with Joseph Chadwick: he just doesn’t have a feel for the Jim Hatfield character. Hatfield never really seems like the same person who’s in the novels by Leslie Scott, Tom Curry, Walker Tompkins, and Peter Germano. If this had been a stand-alone with a totally different Texas Ranger, it would have been a better story. As is, it’s worth reading but not a great example of the series.

“War Bonnets in Wyoming” is a cavalry yarn by Gordon D. Shirreffs, one of the best all-around Western writers who was especially good in the cavalry sub-genre. In this one, the captain who’s in charge of establishing a new fort saves the life of a young Shoshone brave who’s being pursued by hostile Arapahoes. Will this be enough to save the lives of the captain, an Indian agent’s beautiful daughter, and a troop of cavalry later on? I think we know the answer to that, but Shirreffs is such a good writer it doesn’t matter. This story doesn’t have a lot of action, but it’s very suspenseful and I enjoyed it.

Harry Harrison Kroll isn’t somebody I think of as a Western writer. He wrote non-fiction about folklore and Americana, and his fiction is usually of the backwoods, hillbilly variety. But he made a few appearances in Western pulps, including the story “Catchers is Keepers” in this issue. It’s not actually a Western, though. It’s about a riverman on the Mississippi who finds a valuable raft and tries to salvage it, only to end up with trouble and a beautiful girl (but I repeat myself). Out of place though it may be, this is a fairly entertaining story.

Frank Castle got his start in the business assisting and ghosting for Western author Tom W. Blackburn, then went on to write dozens of stories under his own name for the Western pulps in the late Forties through the mid-Fifties. After that he became one of the most reliable novelists in the business, turning out books by the score: Westerns, hardboiled crime, nurse novels, soft-core novels, movie novelizations, and a lot of juvenile TV tie-in novels for Whitman under the name Cole Fannin. I’ve always thought Cole Fannin would have been a great Western pseudonym, but Castle chose to use Steve Thurman instead for the Westerns he didn’t publish under his real name. He also wrote some of the Lassiter novels under the house-name Jack Slade. I really like his work, so I was glad to see that he has a novelette in this issue called “Wild Night in Dodge”.

And a wild night it is. Dodge City is past its hell-raising peak since the railhead has long since moved on westward, but plenty of trouble is lurking there anyway for Kelly Shannon, who brings in a herd from Colorado. Before you know it, he’s met a beautiful redhead who looks just like a long-dead lover of his from Texas, he’s been accused of cheating at cards, he’s been blackjacked and knocked out, and he’s had ten thousand dollars stolen from him. And that’s just the start of a night full of fights, shootouts, double-crosses, and nefarious plans.

This is a terrific story, a 1950s Gold Medal Western novel in miniature. It’s got a hardboiled hero, a beautiful girl, and despicable villains everywhere Kelly Shannon turns. Frank Castle developed a very distinctive style that makes his later novels easy to identify, but it’s just in the formative stages here. The story races along and comes to a satisfying conclusion, and it just makes me want to read more by Castle. 

“Bedlam on the Box X” is by Ben Frank, the author of the Doc Swap series and a writer whose work I’ve grown to heartily dislike. This isn’t a Doc Swap story, so I had a little hope for it, but it’s the same sort of cutesy, allegedly humorous story and I gave up on it after a few pages. Ben Frank just isn’t for me, and I think I’m going to stop trying to read his stories. (I felt the same way about Syl McDowell’s Swap and Whopper series and finally warmed up to it, but I don’t believe it’s going to happen with Ben Frank.)

I don’t know a thing about Garold Hartsock except that he published a couple of dozen stories, mostly Westerns and a few detective stories, in the pulps during the Forties and Fifties. His story “Feud” in this issue is a grim tale about feuding families in Oregon and includes a stereotypical Romeo-and-Juliet element. Hartsock’s writing is pretty good, though, and he kept me turning the pages to the end, which was a major letdown. So, not bad, but not particularly good, either.

And that’s a pretty accurate description of this issue of TEXAS RANGERS, too. The Frank Castle novelette is superb, and the Shirreffs cavalry yarn is very good and well worth reading, too. The Hatfield novel is okay if you’re not expecting too much but frustrating in that it could have been much better, although if you just want to sample one of Richmond’s novels, this would be a good pick because the sidekicks aren’t in it. Otherwise, I’d say that if you own this one, read Castle and Shirreffs and skip the rest.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Ace High Stories, February 1954

WESTERN ACE HIGH STORIES was one of the last Western pulps from Popular Publications and managed only six issues in 1953 and 1954. It's not to be confused with ACE-HIGH MAGAZINE, which was published by Clayton and then Dell from 1921 to 1935, then from 1936 to 1951 by Popular Publications, where it was known variously as ACE-HIGH WESTERN MAGAZINE, ACE-HIGH MAGAZINE, and ACE-HIGH WESTERN STORIES. WESTERN ACE HIGH STORIES, which we're concerned with today, lacks the hyphen in the title. Maybe Popular was trying to cash in on some nostalgia for the earlier versions when they brought back a similar title in '53-'54, or maybe they just had a lot of stories in inventory they needed to burn off. I don't think the cover of this issue is a particularly good one, but it is another example of the iconic "poker game interrupted by a fight" scene that's so common on Western pulps. There are actually some really good authors in this issue: Gordon D. Shirreffs, Frank Castle, J.L. Bouma, Roe Richmond, Bruce Cassiday, and house-names Lance Kermit and David Crewe. I suspect Bouma wrote one or both of those house-name yarns, but that's just a guess on my part. Really, the authors could be almost anybody. I don't own this issue, and I don't recall ever seeing any issues of WESTERN ACE HIGH STORIES. That's a lineup of authors worth reading, though. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Complete Western Book Magazine, February 1952

I don't own this pulp, but it looks like a fine issue of COMPLETE WESTERN BOOK MAGAZINE, starting with the usual excellent cover by Norman Saunders. Inside are stories by a really strong group of authors: D.B. Newton (twice, once as himself and once under the house-name Ken Jason), Philip Ketchum, Dean Owen, H.A. DeRosso, Frank Castle, and Kenneth Fowler. An issue that's almost certainly worth reading if you're fortunate enough to have a copy.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: New Western Magazine, July 1951

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. I’m not sure who the cover artist is. Possibly Robert Stanley. But it’s a good cover no matter who painted it.

As always with a Popular Publications pulp, this issue of NEW WESTERN has some good authors in it. The author of the lead story, John Prescott, is a familiar name to me, although I’m not sure if I’ve ever read anything by him until now. The “Man-Sized Novel” as it’s referred to on the Table of Contents page, “Bad Trouble in Lincoln County”, is more of a novelette, taking up a mere 15 pages in the magazine. But it’s a darned good yarn about a fictional clash taking place on the periphery of the historical Lincoln County War. His family wiped out in a raid on their ranch, the young protagonist sets out for vengeance but finds some unexpected enemies and allies. Prescott has a little more literary style than some of the Western pulpsters but doesn’t skimp on the hardboiled action, either. I need to read more by him.

Edward S. Fox wrote scores of Western and sports stories in a career that lasted from the early Thirties to the mid-Fifties. “A Man’s Land Is His Own!”, despite the exclamation mark, is a low-key tale about a young rancher battling a drought. It’s very well-written, and between that and the subject matter, it reminded me a little of Elmer Kelton’s work. I have to say I hated the ending, though.

I read a decent story by Marvin De Vries in another pulp recently. His story “Loot-Starved!” in this issue of NEW WESTERN falls into the same range. Set in Death Valley, it’s about how the search for a lost mine turns into a quest of another sort. It’s okay, certainly readable enough, but not very memorable.

The other “Man-Sized Novel” in this issue is “Sons of the Gunsmoke Breed” by Walt Coburn, which is a little longer than Prescott’s story but still basically a novelette. By this stage of his career, Coburn’s work was pretty hit-and-miss, but this is definitely a hit. It’s the story of two step-brothers, one an honest cowboy, the other an outlaw’s son who inherited his father’s gun and dishonest tendencies, who travel with a trail drive from Texas to Montana and stay to make a name for themselves in different ways. In Coburn’s best work, there’s an epic feel, and that comes through in this one as it builds to a very satisfying conclusion.

I generally enjoy Tom Roan’s work, but from time to time he wrote animal protagonist stories, and although I read and liked a bunch of those when I was a kid (Jim Kjelgaard’s dog stories were some of my favorites), I have a hard time with them now. Roan’s “Fangs of the Brave” in this issue features an old wolf, and although I tried, I didn’t make it all the way to the end.

I usually enjoy Frank Castle’s stories, too, and I’m happy to report that “Born Bad” in this issue is a good one. It’s from fairly early in Castle’s career, and he hadn’t yet developed the oddball style that marked much of his later work. It’s a more straightforward yarn about a rancher waiting for his ne’er-do-well brother to arrive on a train. The rancher has vengeance in his heart because his brother stole his girl from him a few years earlier and they ran off together. The girl came to a bad end. Now our protagonist plans to gun down his brother as soon as he steps off the train. But, not unexpectedly, things don’t quite play out that way. This one has some good action and a nice hardboiled tone. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

The issue wraps up with the novelette “Don’t Brand Him Yellow!” by Stone Cody, who was actually Thomas E. Mount. It’s a reprint from 1936, but there’s a bit of a mystery that goes with that. There’s no story by that title in Mount’s listing in the Fictionmags Index except this appearance in NEW WESTERN. So either its original appearance was a pulp that hasn’t been indexed yet, or it appeared under some other title, perhaps under Mount’s other pseudonym Oliver King. Whatever its origins, “Don’t Brand Him Yellow!” is a terrific story, with a professional gambler as the protagonist for once, rather than one of the villains. Bret Carew is an honest gambler and a fast gun, although he refuses to fight when accused of cheating because after a saloon shootout he promised his late wife that he would never kill another man. Carew’s beautiful daughter Pat travels with him, and when they run into trouble in a town run by a brutal saloon owner, it looks like luck has gone bad for both of them. Mount was great with action, and there’s plenty of it in this story. There’s also a late twist that’s somewhat predictable, but it still results in a great ending. This is my favorite story in this issue, and Mount is becoming one of my favorite Western writers.

This is a really strong issue of NEW WESTERN considering how late it came in the pulp era. The Coburn and Mount stories are excellent, and the ones by Prescott and Castle aren’t far behind them. If you have a copy of this one, it’s well worth pulling off the shelves and reading, especially those four stories.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ranch Romances, Second March Number, 1953

Kirk Wilson did only a handful of covers for RANCH ROMANCES, but the ones he did are all excellent, like this one. This appears to be a pretty good issue as far as the authors with stories in it, too: Dean Owen, Wayne D. Overholser, Frank Castle, Robert Aldrich (not the movie director), Harrison Colt, Cy Kees, Robert Moore Williams, and Clark Gray. The others could be hit and miss, but Owen, Overholser, and Castle are enough to make an issue like this worth reading.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Leading Western, April 1950

Joseph Szokoli did quite a few covers for Trojan Publishing Corporation, including many on LEADING WESTERN, like this one which I think is very eye-catching. Unlike some Trojan pulps, house-names don't dominate in the table of contents for LEADING WESTERN. This issue includes stories by Clee Woods, De Witt Newbury, and Frank Castle, all real names. There's one by Reese Wade, who was also apparently not a house-name. But there a couple of retitled, unacknowledged reprints under house-names John Kane and Fred Maurel of stories originally published as by Giff Cheshire and Cliff M. Bisbee, the authors' real names. Trojan did this quite a bit.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Frontier Stories, Spring 1951

I don't know who did the dynamic cover on this issue of FRONTIER STORIES. Possibly Allan Anderson, based on the way the horse looks. The group of authors inside is certainly a good one, though: Gordon D. Shirreffs, William R. Cox, Frank Castle, Bennett Foster, John Jo Carpenter (John Reese), and a couple of lesser-known authors, Gene L. Henderson and Walter Hutchings. The Cox and Foster stories are reprints from the Summer 1943 issue of FRONTIER STORIES. It's good to be starting another year of these posts.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Star Western, August 1953

This is a pretty sedate cover, but I like it a lot anyway. There's a nice sense of impending menace to it, and that's a really beautiful woman. I don't know the artist. The authors inside this issue of STAR WESTERN are good ones, as well: Joseph Chadwick, Will Cook, Frank Castle, J.L. Bouma, Van Cort (Wyatt Blassingame), Kenneth L. Sinclair, and Cy Kees. Even this late in the game, STAR WESTERN was a very good Western pulp.

Forgotten Books: The Hungry Gun - Steve Thurman (Frank Castle)

Will Cade is a horse rancher in Arizona who’s trying to put his past as an outlaw behind him. You know how that usually turns out in Western novels, so what happens next in THE HUNGRY GUN won’t surprise many veteran Western readers. Cade’s old partner shows up, stagecoaches start getting robbed, Cade’s secrets come out and the townspeople believe he’s part of the wave of lawlessness. To complicate things even more, the saloon girl he used to love shows up, and the citizens start talking about vigilance committees. And what Cade’s old partner from the owlhoot days really wants is Will Cade dead.

THE HUNGRY GUN is a very traditional hardboiled Western published in 1967 by Paperback Library. The author, Steve Thurman, was actually the veteran pulpster, paperbacker, and tie-in writer Frank Castle. A few weeks ago, I read and posted about one of his juvenile novels written under the name Cole Fannin and featuring Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. Castle is writing for adults in THE HUNGRY GUN, so it features a lot of brutal violence, sexually charged situations, and a protagonist who spends a lot of time brooding when he’s not engaged in fistfights or shootouts.

Castle got his start in the writing business by working as assistant to and ghostwriter for Western novelist Tom W. Blackburn in the same sort of set-up that Blackburn, years earlier, had with Ed Earl Repp. With that background, it’s no surprise that he knew how to spin a yarn and keep a story moving along at a good pace. THE HUNGRY GUN may not break any new ground, but it has some excellent scenes in it and I really enjoyed reading it. It’s never been reprinted, as far as I know, but if you’re a Western fan and come across a copy, it’s worth picking up.

Forgotten Books: Roy Rogers and Dale Evans in River of Peril - Cole Fannin (Frank Castle)

When I was a kid, I read a lot of the juvenile novels published by Whitman, many of them based on TV shows or movie stars I liked. I was a big Roy Rogers fan, so I would have read this one if I’d ever seen it. Clearly, I just never came across a copy. Until now. (That’s an Internet scan of the cover, by the way. My copy is beat up and has loose covers.)

ROY ROGERS AND DALE EVANS IN RIVER OF PERIL is a clumsy title for a pretty good book. Unlike many of Roy’s movies and his TV show, which were contemporary Westerns including modern technology and even Cold War espionage, this novel is in a more traditional Western vein with nothing more advanced than railroads and the telegraph. As the book opens, Roy is on a secret mission for an unnamed U.S. president who’s pretty clearly Theodore Roosevelt, which places the time period as very early 20^th Century.

Roy’s job is to find out who’s trying to keep settlers out of the Bitter River country in Idaho, which the president wants to open for settlement by homesteaders. He’s assisted in this effort by a talkative old-timer named Kammas Tibbs, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Gabby Hayes. Dale shows up, even though Roy tried to keep her from taking part in what might be a dangerous job. There’s a gang of bad guys ramrodded by a head henchman who would be played by Roy Barcroft is this was a movie, and a mysterious mastermind behind all the villainy. Since this is a novel aimed at young readers, nobody gets killed, but there’s plenty of gunplay and a few brutal fistfights, plus some good scenes involving the rapids in Bitter River. This is almost a plot that could have worked as one of Roy’s late features directed by William Witney and written by Sloan Nibley.

Speaking of writers, the author of this novel is by-lined Cole Fannin, but that was actually veteran pulpster and paperbacker Frank Castle. Castle wrote a bunch of hardboiled Westerns and crime novels, but he was a thorough pro and could turn out juveniles like this, too, and in fact wrote quite a few of them. He had a very distinctive style in some of his paperbacks, but either he kept it under control on this assignment or some of his more oddball sentence structures were edited out. What’s important to me is that I enjoyed this fast-paced yarn and thought Castle did a good job of capturing Roy and Dale’s personalities. If you’re a fan of their movies, I think this book is well worth reading if you can find a copy.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Ranch Stories, Summer 1950

THRILLING RANCH STORIES was the Thrilling Group's second-string Western romance pulp, but you can't really tell that from the covers and authors, which seem to me just as good as those in RANCH ROMANCES. Take the Summer 1950 issue, for example, which sports an excellent Kirk Wilson cover and includes stories by Leslie Scott (as A. Leslie), Johnston McCulley, Chuck Martin, Frank P. Castle, Walt Sheldon, Ben Frank, and Eugene A. Clancy. Those are all solid, prolific Western pulpsters, and one of them (Scott) is a favorite of mine. Sounds like a good issue to me.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Short Stories, June 1949

I like the cover on this issue of WESTERN SHORT STORIES, but what's really amazing is the group of authors inside: Walker A. Tompkins, Giles A. Lutz, D.B. Newton, Roe Richmond, Stephen Payne, Joseph Wayne (either Wayne D. Overholser or Overholser in collaboration with Lewis B. Patten), Joseph Payne Brennan, Frank P. Castle, John Callahan, John H. Latham, Clark Gray, house-name Ken Jason, and somebody named Costa Carousso, the only author in the bunch I haven't heard of. There are several of my favorites in there, and several more who were consistently good Western pulpsters.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Novels and Short Stories, May 1950

This is another Norman Saunders cover packed with detail. This scene might have seemed too busy if it was painted by many other artists, but Saunders had a way of always making it work. As usual, there are some good writers in this issue of WESTERN NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES, too: Les Savage Jr., Frank Castle, John Callahan, and J.L. Bouma. I hope no stray bullets hit that box full of dynamite!

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Fifteen Western Tales, July 1954

This guy's hat is okay, but I'm afraid his cigar is done for. Those hombres shooting at him will pay for that, I'll bet. This issue of FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES has some pretty good writers in its pages: Gordon D. Shirreffs, Norman A. Fox, Frank Castle, George C. Appell, J.L. Bouma, Rolland Lynch, Robert E. Mahaffey, Richard H. Nelson (actually William Hamling, better known as an editor and publisher of SF magazines and softcore paperbacks), Richard Ferber, and house-names David Crewe and Dave Sands. Shirreffs and Fox are reason enough to read an issue of a Western pulp, and I'll bet most of the other stories are pretty good, too.

Forgotten Books: Sidewinder (Lassiter #7) - Jack Slade (Frank Castle)

Many people consider the Slocum series, published originally by Playboy Press under the house-name Jake Logan, to be the first Adult Western series, but I believe that’s incorrect. The Lassiter series, published under various imprints by Belmont/Tower/Leisure under the house-name Jack Slade, started in 1968, eight years before Slocum and included all the elements of an Adult Western: sex, a gritty, violent tone, and a somewhat amoral protagonist. True, the sex scenes usually aren’t as graphic as the ones to be found later in Slocum and other Adult Western series, but they’re definitely there, and the violence and shades-of-gray characterizations are in full force.

A lot of this goes back to the pulp SPICY WESTERN. As far as I know, W.T. Ballard, who created the Lassiter series and wrote the first four books, didn’t write for SPICY WESTERN, but his good friend and occasional writing partner Robert Leslie Bellem did, and as a prolific professional pulpster, Ballard certainly would have been aware of the magazine even without the Bellem connection. So my contention is that the whole Adult Western paperback sub-genre can be traced back to the pulps and is largely the creation of one man, W.T. Ballard. (I expound more on this in my introduction to LUST OF THE LAWLESS, a fine collection of the stories Robert Leslie Bellem wrote for SPICY WESTERN.)

The Lassiter series ran until 1981 with several different writers authoring the novels as Jack Slade. The most idiosyncratic of them, at least as far as his writing style goes, was probably Frank Castle, who turned out the Lassiter novels SIDEWINDER and THE BADLANDERS. Castle wrote for the pulps and also wrote several Westerns and crime novels for Gold Medal during the Fifties. (I think the Gold Medal hardboiled Westerns also had an influence on the Adult Westerns.) I read THE BADLANDERS a number of years ago, and I have to confess that I misattributed it to Tom Curry, another veteran pulp Western author who wrote a couple of the Sundance novels under the Jack Slade name. It’s clearly Castle’s work, though, as proven by Lynn Munroe.

Which brings us, at last, to SIDEWINDER, which I read not long ago. Lassiter is a drifting gun-for-hire and sometimes outlaw, and as this book opens, he’s south of the border in Mexico, being forced to dig his own grave by the firing squad that’s soon going to execute him. It’s a great opening, and Castle never slows down the action and suspense as he gives us the back-story while we go along. It seems that Lassiter was hired by Homer Brill, an American mining tycoon in Arizona, to travel into Mexico and collect on an I.O.U. that’s owed to Brill by General Juan Peralta, a local strongman who also owns a gold mine. Instead of paying the debt, Peralta loses his temper and orders Lassiter shot.

Of course, Lassiter escapes and quickly discovers that all is not as it appears to be at first. Conspiracies and double-crosses abound. Everybody’s after a fortune in gold and nobody can be trusted. As you’d expect from a novel set in Mexico during the late 19^th Century, political intrigue and revolution play large parts in the plot as well. And of course there are a couple of beautiful women involved, and Lassiter beds both of them when he’s not busy running around shooting and getting shot—and knifed—and blowing stuff up real good. Lassiter wants to get his hands on some of that gold, but it’s even more important to him that he settle some scores with men who crossed him.

Castle has an odd, choppy, comma-heavy, and sentence-fragmented style that takes some getting used to. Once you do, however, it works pretty well and produces some vivid scenes. He also has a good grasp on Lassiter’s character. Lassiter isn’t a typical Western hero, but he has a number of opportunities to be even less sympathetic but winds up doing the right thing instead. He’s not necessarily a guy you’d want as a friend, but you certainly don’t want him as an enemy, because he finds a way to just keep fighting until he wins.

I’d say SIDEWINDER is about in the middle when it comes to the Lassiter series. I’ve read much better books in the series, but I’ve read worse, too. That may seem like I’m damning with faint praise, but that’s not my intention. I enjoyed reading SIDEWINDER, and I think most Adult Western fans would, too. Just be aware that Castle’s prose is definitely off-trail.

(The image above is my copy, the one I read. There's an earlier edition from 1969, but I don't own that one and wasn't able to find an image on-line.)

UPDATE: Here's the cover of that first edition, provided by my friend Kurt Middleman.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Novels and Short Stories, June 1951

A great Norman Saunders cover and stories by H.A. DeRosso, Giles A. Lutz, Frank Castle, and Roe Richmond. It may have been late in the pulp era, and WESTERN NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES may have been considered a salvage market, but this looks like a knockout issue anyway.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Triple Western, December 1952

I’ve grown increasingly fond of novellas and short novels as I get older (the result of less time to read and a dwindling attention span, I suspect), so it makes sense I’d like TRIPLE WESTERN, a pulp devoted to them. Recently I pulled the December 1952 issue off my shelves and read it, and as expected, I had a fine time doing so. The scan, as usual, is from the copy I read.

The issue leads off with Frank Castle’s “Brothers in Blood”, which is really the only story long enough to be called a novel. I estimate it’s around 40,000 words. It starts off as a standard range war plot, with the villain out to take over the ranch owned by brothers Saul and Hal Baxter. Saul and Hal really don’t get along that well, but they share a determination to hang on to their spread.

From that typical opening, Castle brings in some surprises, including some long-buried family secrets reminiscent of Ross Macdonald and a pair of overlapping romantic triangles. His distinctive style, which is really dominant in the Lassiter novels he wrote as Jack Slade, is already somewhat on display with its missing verbs, odd tenses, and abundance of commas. Castle makes it work, though, and the story just races along in very entertaining fashion. I enjoyed this one a lot.

Steuart Emery had a long and prolific career in the pulps, dating back to 1919, although he seems to be mostly forgotten today. For the first three decades of his career, he produced primarily war and aviation stories, with a few detective yarns thrown in. By the Fifties, though, he was writing mostly cavalry stories for various Western pulps in the Thrilling Group, like this issue’s novella “Apache Dawn”. I’d read some of Emery’s stories in TEXAS RANGERS and recall liking them, so it’s no surprise I enjoyed this one, too.

Emery is a very traditional plotter, so don’t look for many surprises in his stories. “Apache Dawn” makes use of the old “frontier-seasoned officer vs. by-the-book officer from back east” plot, with a romantic triangle thrown in as well. It plays out just about as you’d expect, but Emery writes so well the predictability doesn’t matter much. The numerous battle scenes are excellent, and the beleaguered hero is very likable. There’s a surprisingly good heroine in this story, too, who definitely doesn’t fade into the background as sometimes happens in Western pulp yarns. Overall, “Apache Dawn” is a suspenseful and very effective tale. I was impressed enough I ordered a copy of one of Emery’s air war novels, since I’ve never read anything except his Westerns.

About thirty years ago I went on a Luke Short binge, reading a couple dozen of his novels in fairly short order. These days I still read one now and then, or one of his pulp novellas like “Lead Won’t Lie” in this issue. It’s a reprint from the September 9, 1939 issue of WESTERN STORY. Short, whose real name was Frederick Glidden, usually had a hardboiled tone to his stories, and this one is no different. Jim Hutchins is the only survivor of a violent frontier feud, and when he drifts to a different part of the country and starts a ranch in partnership with another man, trouble soon crops up again when Jim’s partner is murdered and he’s framed for the killing.

As it turns out, that’s not the last murder Jim is framed for, as the plot of “Lead Won’t Lie” becomes pretty complicated. Not Erle Stanley Gardner-complicated, mind you, but still pretty complex for a traditional action Western. Glidden does a good job with that action, too, as Jim Hutchins has to unravel the scheme and expose the real killers in order to save his own hide.

This issue wraps up with an 8-page short story by another master of the genre, Gordon D. Shirreffs. “Gun Runners of the Gila” is a fairly early effort from Shirreffs, but it has the great hardboiled action scenes he’s famous for. The plot concerns a man who’s trying to find out who’s responsible for a wagon train massacre in which his brother died. The story feels a little rushed—there’s enough plot to have supported a novelette—but it’s still quite enjoyable.

From start to finish, this is a fine issue of TRIPLE WESTERN. If you own a copy or happen to run across one, it’s well worth reading.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Best Western, March 1952

A little bit different sort of cover from Norman Saunders, but excellent work, as always. And with stories inside by Walker A. Tompkins, H.A. DeRosso, Frank Castle, and Lee Floren, the contents are nothing to sneeze at, either.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Novels and Short Stories, January 1950

WESTERN NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES was a pretty good Western pulp. This one has a nice action cover and stories by Matt Stuart (who was really one of my favorites, L.P. Holmes), Philip Ketchum, H.A. De Rosso, Giles A. Lutz, and Frank Castle. That's a solid group of writers.