The Iron Bronc by Will Ermine (1944)

A wandering gunfighter named Jim Grimwood wants to buy a railway line from his nemesis, Slade Rankin, who tricks him so he can get ahead in the race. Then that gunfighter falls in love with a pretty railroad owner and offers to help her so he can show up his rival.

Not much to say about the story. It's pretty generic.

That said, Grimwood himself is the best Western hero I've seen since Joe Warder from South of Rio Grande. He's not as smarmy as Matt Brennan from Silver Canyon, and much better fleshed out than Joe Morgan from Law Rides the Range, and even Ed Lash from The Gringo Bandit.
Grimwood, to say the least, has credible character flaws. He can be and has been fooled by the enemy a couple of times and is bent on getting even with Rankin. He's also torn over his love for Pat Ryan and his revenge on Rankin complicates the situation until, of course, he decided to redeem himself.
Granted, he's still a stereotype but a pretty well done one.

Grimwood's friend Andrew "Timber" Smith reminds me of the kind of roles Bud Spencer usually played, the gentle giant with a lot of strength, warmth and intelligence. He's described as a "gay cat", meaning that he's a drifter with no real home, and who prefers adventure to settling anywhere. The "gay" part does mean "happy" although he does seem to be rather dismayed when Grimwood is more interested in his lover than his friend.

Pat Ryan is not as bland as some of the other main female characters in Western stories I've read in the past, but definitely not as strong or defined as Carmel Alvarado from South of Rio Grande, Kit Kavanaugh from Law Rides the Range, Sally Simmons from The Million-Dollar Bloodhunt, the Deever women from A Coffin Full of Dollars or Belle Buckley from Surrender, Hell! None of those women exactly pass the Bechdel Test but they're much better fleshed out as characters.
Ryan does have a determination to keep her business and some leadership skills but ultimately Grimwood makes most of the decisions, not her. Ultimately she's just a prize to be won.

Though it's predictable and not very adventurous in its plot elements, it's a fun and engaging novel.

By the way, one of Rankin's men is called Blue Peters.

You thought that, too, didn't you?

Rio Kid Western July 1950

Guns of Fort Benton by Tom Curry

The plot basically is, Captain Bob Pryor, his sidekick Celestino Mireles and Buffalo Bill Cody (!) are chasing down outlaws Cal Doak and Baldy Baldwin who are selling arms to the likes of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Gall, and they gather the help of ranchers Lease Ward and Joe Haskins to help them fight.

What can I say? It's pulpy men's adventure. It's very colourful and romanticised. It's not so much about daily life as it is about action and drama.

I found this story hard to get through. Probably because it's about the US Cavalry, which I don't know enough about. Or because the characters are all very bland and boring. Pryor is way too clean cut to be an interesting hero and Celestino is barely there for most of this one, so we don't know their relationship beyond him calling Pryor "General". Maybe Celestino's his secret gay lover, who knows?

It does get a bit better. There's a bit where Pryor and Cody abduct an unconscious henchman of Baldwin's and try to get some information about Baldwin's plans by bringing him to partial consciousness and pretending to be his bosses. That bit was fun.

It does remind me of why I like Westerns so much... there are characters in it who aren't perfect, who are a bit more interesting than the law abiding hero. Basically every time I choose to watch Cimarron Strip whenever it's on TV.

I'm not too interested in stories guest starring real life heroes of the historical United States, but that's just me.

Surrender, Hell! by Robert J. Hogan

A short story about a man who tries to get his childhood friend to surrender or he be shot down. The characters are very interesting.
Sometime in the past, Walt Buckley and Cato Lane fought for the hand of Belle Boyd, and Buckley won.
Buckley and Lane are both very interesting characters. Buckley's a typical law abiding hero, but he's very divided on whether or not to kill his old friend. Cato, though an outlaw on the run, is a character both the reader and the hero sympathises with, especially since it's revealed that Cato rescued Buckley from drowning in quicksand when they were very young, and Buckley has been forever in debt for that. Furthermore, Cato left a hidden stash of money for Buckley to spend.
Buckley's wife, Belle, is gentle, but strong, and having had her in the middle of this love triangle adds another layer to her character.

The story was short, but very engaging with characters who were fully realized, which surprised me.

Guadeloupe Gunfire by Nels Leroy Jorgensen

Burke Donahue is a wandering gunfighter who has returned from Mexico after two years of absence. He had been the son of a successful cattle rancher, but the ranch was sold after his father's passing, he and his Tony had split between them what was left, and they went their separate ways. Both brothers gained a bad reputation. It's not quite explained what Burke did, but Tony was rumored to have killed his previous employer. Of course, he was framed for it by two half-Mexican men he had become a comrade of.
Not very much to say about this story. The characters are pretty thin.

Army Commission by Barry Scobee

This has the potential to be a greater story but some of it goes nowhere.
Sergeant Duggan is commissioned by Major Townstreet to burn down a Native American camp and send the people and their sub-chief back to their "assembly grounds", or else he'll be discharged from the army. Duggan had been friends with the sub-chief and had been specially selected to appeal to him.
The dialogue can be clumsily written, such as when the sub-chief, only known as "Jimmy Bigpants", rightly refuses to be moved back to the assembly grounds, and then agrees to go back there when Duggan drops the matches he had been ordered to burn the tepees with into the fire.
The atmosphere for most part is very rich, especially the army's journey towards the encampment.
Of course, there is a woman in the story with feelings for the handsome young sergeant... I have a feeling that some Western stories are just male wish fulfilment fantasies.
Again, the characters are kind of thin. It did seem to have been written in a haste.

Other features of this issue include Gun Titan of the West by John A. Thompson, a short biography on gun manufacturer John Browning; The Bunkhouse, a feature by "Foghorn Clancy" telling the story of outlaw Nathaniel Reed.

And finally, an unsung hero's letter to the editor...

'A Mighty Girl' would have a field day with this. Though even if it is 1950 she shouldn't care what men think of her. What was the point of sending her photograph, whether or not she knew that all the editor would approve of was her looks? Well, her heart was in the right place.

It seems to me that whoever the editor is, he made fun of Lutjens for her assertiveness. "You can come out of hiding", indeed. Their response wasn't helpful or fair, and it wasn't funny to assume that Ms. Lutjens was emasculating her agitator.

The attitudes towards women in 1950 still shock me.

All that aside, it was a mixed bag of stories. Some I enjoyed, and others I found difficult to get through.

Law Rides the Range by Walt Coburn (1935)

A pretty run of the mill novel, but with some nice twists and turns and a couple of interesting characters.

Law Rides the Range is the story of Joe Morgan, the man who grew up with a reputation for being the son of an outlaw; his father, Wade, killed the town boss, Shotgun Riley and went off to join the Hole in the Wall Gang, the Wild Bunch.
As a child, Joe shot Riley's comrade, Bull Mitchell the saloon owner, but as he grows up he's taught not to become an outlaw like his father, but to become a lawyer instead. A lawman, anyway.

Now he's decided to bring Mitchell and the Clantons to justice, and finds himself in a love triangle between his childhood friend Amy Steele, and the new girl in town, Kit Kavanaugh.

I was pleasantly surprised by Kit because she defied all my expectations of what I've seen from female characters like her in Hollywood Westerns. She's much too complicated to be a "bad girl", which she would have been in any other story. Not only did she have the conscience to go out and rescue her romantic rival Amy from the Clanton brothers, she also manages to avoid getting captured herself, even chasing them out with a few threats.
I thought she was going to get killed so she can be out of the way for Joe and Amy to get married. No way. She personally encourages them to marry, and goes off and marries Pete Smyth instead.
At times she was the hero of the story, not Joe.
Sure, she's told not to fight by Wade Morgan during his final standoff, but other than that, she's a badass all the same.

Coburn gives a very good sense of time, place and even community, allowing us to get to know some of the townspeople of Pay Dirt.

The story isn't all that memorable and the characters are mostly archetypes. I'm getting shades of Morgan Park from Silver Canyon reflected in Bull Mitchell. They both even get in fistfights with the respective heroes.
We know that Amy Steele is the civilized girl, the good one, that the hero is fated to marry. But at least unlike in Silver Canyon the hero knows the girl for a long time, as opposed to deciding to marry her at first sight and refusing to take no for an answer.

The action and suspense is good in this one. There's even one moment that really shocked me.

In the end, everything is set right and Joe and his father's partner Bob Burch hang up their guns, with amazing ease. Everything is tied up satisfactorily, even though lives have been lost in the process.

Law Rides the Range was an engaging read that I got through quickly.

Not much to say about it, but Kit was really cool.

The Million-Dollar Bloodhunt by Joe Millard (1973)

If Pachuco's so squat, why does he look like Arturo de Cordova here?

A bounty hunter, a sassy acrobat, a Lee van Cleef aeronaut and an alcoholic dwarf all meet in a desert. Adventures and shenanigans ensue.

Manco is chasing after the two-bit outlaw Froggy Benson when he's basically run over by a hydrogen balloon and Benson makes off with his horse and gun.
The accident was caused by Professor Samson Garff, an aeoronaut and Lee Van Cleef lookalike, with Saginaw Kirp's "tawny, leonine eyes", who is Manco's only hope of recovering his possessions.
Among Garff's crew are Sally Simmons, the acrobat, and the dwarf Jigger. This circus troupe is different to the one in A Coffin Full of Dollars. A bit smaller and more ragtag. The blurb paints them as double-dealers and "treacherous" but they seem like okay people.

Froggy Benson, described as being "like one of nature's bad jokes", had worked under the bandit chief Pachuco, and had earned a large price on his head. He's the subject of a prophecy envisioned by an old Apache medicine man, Buffalo Going Away, and gets a shirt from him which they all believe to be magical but of course ultimately it's just a dud. And it doesn't help that Buffalo Going Away repeatedly overestimates Benson's power. When we see Benson kill someone, it is a literal misfire.

Meanwhile Pachuco is in prison waiting to be hanged, but escapes from the vast prison in a vividly written, death-defying stunt. Garff's balloon knocks him off the outer wall into the prison courtyard, but ends up on the right side of the wall when he clings to the grapnel rope. So Pachuco escapes not only with strength, but with luck, too.
To paraphrase Manco, Pachuco "is only half as smart as he thinks, but twice as smart as he talks and acts". His bloody murder of his cellmate shows him to be as vicious as El Indio from a Few Dollars More, but he's more comically impetuous.

Now free from prison, the outlaw makes his way to the hidden gold stash only he knows about.

Like Apachito and Bandera, Pachuco is described as "squat", "swarthy", "pudgy", "fat", etc, and little else. Neither he nor his other counterparts are given important facial details. Are their foreheads prominent or not? What are the shapes of their noses, or their lips? Pachuco's only other physical distinction is that he's shirtless for most of the story (which begs the question as to how he could have hidden a makeshift knife in his sleeve if he doesn't wear a shirt). Even though his name potentially means "flashily dressed".

Pachuco appears to be very little in the story, but he is the best written between himself, Apachito and Bandera, even though ultimately the three are virtually indistinguishable and interchangeable. The three are all classic bandidos out of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Nevertheless, Pachuco has the potential to be among the revisionist character types of the mid-Sixties onwards.

I've learned from this book that Manco can speak perfect Apache. That would have solved a problem or two in A Dollar to Die For (which was by a different author, but still.)

Speaking of Manco, he has the same problems as before. He talks too much and even raises his voice a couple of times. Talking that much had gotten him into trouble in A Coffin Full of Dollars and he would have known that.
I heard that when he got the script for A Fistful of Dollars, Clint Eastwood crossed out most of his lines and told Leone that it was a better idea if he communicated through his expressions rather than through dialogue, and it worked.

Manco's constant yapping reminds me less of Clint Eastwood, and more of John Wayne. It's not his voice I want to be hearing when I'm reading these, it's Eastwood's.
True, Eastwood is just as dogmatic and self-righteous these days but that's beside the point.

Manco not only raises his voice this time around, he yells. That's something I can't imagine. His outburst is written as such "MY GUN AND MY HORSE!"

Professor Garff, like Pachuco, is virtually indistinguishable from his counterparts. He has a very similar personality, too: gruff, tough and intelligent. Like Shadrach, he is a bounty hunter, and like Kirp, he has had a past with the respective bandido of the novel; While Kirp knew Bandera from the Civil War, Garff made a deal to break Pachuco out of prison so he could fly over and get the gold from the bandit's hideaway. But the twist is, Garff wants the bounty on Pachuco as well as the gold because he feels like he needs to be rewarded by the Mexican government.

So, since they're both after the same thing, Manco and Garff are forced to work together, inevitably.

Sally Simmons is a pretty cool character. She's like all the Deever women in A Coffin Full of Dollars  put together. Sure, she makes food and coffee for the men and sort of needs to be saved by Garff and Manco at one point, she does dare to shove Pachuco off his horse with her strong gymnast's arms (that's what I meant by "sort of") and escape from the outlaws, as well as save herself from Pachuco when he tries to abduct her a second time. She is not a groundbreaking character by today's standards but she is a very capable woman for the time the book was written.
She also has quite a standard love-hate relationship with Garff, who found her when she was homeless and hungry, and in the end decides to marry him. Manco secretly disapproves and decides she deserves someone better (not him, either, although his manners have been better around women ever since he put on that poncho.)

Until recently I thought that in the entire Dollars franchise, including novels, the only bandido whose life Manco/ Joe/ Blondie spared was Tuco Ramirez in both The Good, the Bad and the Ugly  and A Dollar to Die For. There was another- Pachuco, whom the bounty hunter wanted to keep alive so he could lead him to his hidden gold stash. However, the situation is complicated when Apaches come after the outlaws, and the posse hunting Pachuco arrives, too. In the end, Manco could not protect Pachuco, who was killed by a stray bullet as he gunned down Froggy Benson.

So in the end the whole journey was pretty much pointless, just like both endings of The Good, the Bad, the Weird . In the International ending, Tae-goo is in the Pachuco role, but in the Korean ending, he's in the Manco role, and it wouldn't be the last time; In GBW 's Korean ending, Tae-goo pulled the same trick that Joe did in A Fistful of Dollars, and like Manco in this book who doesn't get the gold but collects the bounties on Pachuco and his lieutentant Much-Belly, though he never got the treasure, Tae-goo was able to escape with the diamonds that Chang-yi With him.

The novel goes along quickly, despite the padding of banter between Garff and Manco, and has some pretty good action scenes in it.

The story is basically just men's adventure, but it's fun.

Argosy, June 23 1934

I bought this one because the cover illustration made me curious.

This is one of those all-purpose men's magazines. There's only a couple of Western stories in here so I'm reviewing just those.

The Trail of Danger, Part 1 by William MacLeod Raine

California, 1849. A young sailor, Dennis Gifford's ship is shanghaied by pirates, but he makes a daring escape into Monterey. There he is attacked by a couple of thugs, but he begins to realize that one of them is a powerful criminal who is courting a pretty girl, Rosita Martinez, whose garden our hero tries to escape into.

The criminal calls himself "Juan Bandini", but at one point he very nearly gives away his real name- Juan Castro.
Really, dude? If you're the greatest bandit in California, you can't make a dumb mistake like that. Luckily for him Dennis and Rosita don't notice him second guessing his own name and go about the conversation like it was nothing.

Gifford is taken in by Rosita's family, without telling them that the two had met a little beforehand, lives in comfort and is offered land (lucky kid), but he has to stay at the place anyway because he eventually convinces them that this "Bandini" guy whom the family knew is, of course, Juan Castro, who is hunting him, because he hates Americans. 

Rosita's father Ramon was a little suspicious of him anyway. 

So Gifford goes with one of Rosita's brothers to investigate and runs into Juan's lieutenant, Felipe, who is essentially described to have teeth just as nice and white as his leader's. They also meet the obligatory muscle of the gang, Pedro, who isn't too different from Lupo in A Coffin Full of Dollars, or Gualtero in South of Rio Grande. The two young men eventually arrive at the hills, meet a bunch of soldiers and together they try to take on the gang. 

Back at the Martinez place he receives a letter from Juan asking for Rosita's hand in marriage and threatening to kill Gifford. Dude, just write about the marriage part if you want Rosita's father on your side. You don't need to put him off by threatening Gifford as well.

"He is full of flourishes and courtesy, but every few words the threats break through." You think?

The pacing of this story goes along at breakneck speed. I'm almost considering having the full novel.

Very engaging and fun to read, even if it doesn't break any new ground. You've still got the hero, the girl, the villain and his musclebound henchman... it's all very formulaic.

Picture Rock, Part 3 by Frank Richardson Pierce

And speaking of formulaic...

So this guy named Jerry McGrath is out to kill a man named Spider Darby who is determined to get control of McGrath's father's mine.
However, when Darby's daughter Lois starts flirting with him as part of a scheme, she begins to fall in love with him for real. 

It's not very memorable but it kept me reading anyway.

The Gringo Bandit by William Hopson (1947)

Ed Lash, an American supporting the Revolution, is assigned along with lawyer Jim Abernathy to deliver a message from Pancho Villa to General Gonzales: Colonel Holden's cattle have been held in Sonora and the order being sent is to move the cattle to Arizona.
But things are incredibly complicated by a love triangle he was involved in. He had shot down Rufe Stinson in a gunfight over Gloria, Colonel Holden's daughter, who is said to have caused it. Of course, she didn't intentionally cause it, but apparently she's to blame anyway.
Rufe's brother Buck, who was masquerading as an Orozquista, "Fuentes", and was working with Abel Ortiz Argumedo, comes looking for revenge and plots with Abernathy to kill Lash. However, Abernathy is in love with Gloria and wants to marry her, and a girl named Maria Elena Chacon is in love with Lash, having been a nurse for him.

The book deals a little with race and cultural identity: Lash is derogatorily called a "greaser lover", and feels almost more Mexican in some ways than American. He speaks fluent Spanish, is personal friends with Villa and feels comfortable socialising with Villa's other soldiers.
On the other hand the Chinese people are faceless, "scurrying" servants. Their boss, Stelle Bleeker, doesn't even bother to speak their language or learn their names, even though she knows the story of one of them.
Plus, the novel generalises all Americans to be civilised people. When Buck Stinson assaults Ed Lash, Hopson writes, "This was no longer an American or even a sane man." This implies that although Mexicans like Villa can be and are sensitively drawn, apparently they are not sensible or "civilised" the way Jim Abernathy or even Ed Lash are.

Gloria Holden is an ideal "pure" woman always seen in Hollywood Western movies, the prim and proper lady whose life always revolves around men.
Maria Elena Chacon is in love with Lash, but turns him down just so he could be with Gloria (whom he claims to hate but doesn't). But why would she leave him to be with Gloria if she's going with Gloria to Arizona after the Revolution anyway? I understand that she doesn't want to be where she is anymore since her family is dead, so there's nothing more for her in the country. That gives her a better motivation than just demure romantic sacrifice.

Predictably, Maria is killed off after she leaves Lash on his own, which is part of a plot to get Lash out of the way so Abernathy can have Gloria for himself. And probably racist misogyny on the author's part. 

It's interesting that Lash sees her as a symbol of Mexico. It's as though he tries to find himself through her, or that she defines the country for him.
Still, he ends up with Gloria, which feels awfully contrived.
The most charismatic woman in the book is Stelle Bleeker, but she's a fat innkeeper and somehow her weight and unattractiveness give her more proactivity, since apparently she's not acceptable to be anyone's property.

Abernathy is not a particularly gifted lawyer. Most of the time I forget he is one. When he tries to cover up his murder attempt of Lash, he can't keep track of his own lie. He stated that Lash was killed at a hotel, and then changed it almost immediately, claiming that he died fighting in the Revolution.

As for Ed Lash himself, some things about himself are interesting, such as feeling more Mexican than American, but not enough to distinguish himself as a unique character.

There were typos throughout the novel, evidence that it was likely written and published in a haste. That's why the English isn't "ferfect". Even the grammar could be awkward at times. There is one point where Gloria says to her father, "Did you and Jim force Ed to go to Chihuahua to see Villa on pain of death by hanging?" What exactly did she mean by that? When Lash and Abernathy were in Chihuahua, the only one they saw with a rope around their neck was a horse that Villa took for his army.

There are so many plot threads in this one that don't all fit together. The love triangle, the revolution and the cattle drive. The revolution storyline interests me the most, as we have this man integrating into a social group he feels at home with. The battle is vividly realised, and probably the best thing about the whole book.
There was a romance plot, too, in The Wonderful Country, but it doesn't interfere with the story's central theme of cultural identity.

Overall, this is a clumsy mess. The dialogue can be a bit banal, and it doesn't quite fit together as a whole. Reading more about the Mexican revolution has been fun, though.

Blood for a Dirty Dollar by Joe Millard (1973)

Blood for a Dirty Dollar is probably the strangest of Joe Millard's spinoff novels so far. And that's saying something. The last one had a circus. This one has a Medieval castle with knights in suits of armour.

Some time after the Civil War, some English jackass named Lord Veldon gets the insane idea of moving an entire English castle, stone by stone, to the American desert, where it was rebuilt near the Broken Hills, known to be a den of thieves, gets a bunch of guards to dress like Medieval knights but with long-range guns and refuses to deposit whatever treasure he's got in the bank. A couple of scientists go to investigate the castle and mysteriously disappear, and a "brown butterball" with a $20,000 bounty on his head named Bandera has something to do with it.

The Man with No Name- Manco, Joe, Blondie, whatever you may call him, goes in to investigate, too, and while at the tavern closest to Veldon Castle he runs into one Saginaw Kirp, life insurance agent and another Lee Van Cleef lookalike. Kirp is not the peaceful life insurance agent he makes himself out to be. He's described exactly the same as Shadrach except without the scar. They have a distinctive "wedge shaped" face and everything. They even both wear frock coats!
However, unlike in A Coffin Full of Dollars, Millard doesn't make any clever remark about the fact that Lee Van Cleef has turned up in two of Sergio Leone's movies in different roles.

Joe and Kirp get a lead on Bandera when they meet a cagey reporter who claimed to have interviewed him. They go and check out the bandit chief's hideout and what follows is a loose retread of Joe/Manco and Shadrach's discovery of Apachito's hideout in A Coffin Full of Dollars, only with scientists in captivity, and Bandera's men making copies of the armor (but bulletproof, unlike the armor at Veldon Castle) and a greasewood powered wagon to storm Veldon Castle with.

Meanwhile a petty thief named Jingles goes west to sneak into Veldon Castle. I enjoyed his subplot. He was a fun little rascal, even though he did distract from the story a bit.

This one has the same problem as in the last one I read: The Man with No Name talks too much. Was it so hard just to write his inner monologue, just as thoughts? Also, he rarely loses his temper and when it does it comes out in a terrifying slow burn. He never raises his voice. Millard should have made note of that. Either that or he was really good at pushing Joe past his limit.

Bandera, real name Juliano Bandera Mescato, is described in the exact vague manner as his counterpart Apachito: squat, swarthy and with a "guttural" voice. Any other details he would have cared to share? Apachito in A Coffin Full of Dollars is said to have the "unmistakable stamp of Indian blood on his features". Bandera's face is only "broad". "Broad" is still no help.
We do get to know more about Bandera than we do about Apachito, including how he found his hiding place, and a little bit of his backstory.
He's not as entertaining as Apachito, but he livens up the story, even though he's a one-note villain in the vein of Gold Hat from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Sometimes Millard writes his accent phonetically, but most of the time he forgets to.
By the way, I like how his middle name means "flag". Very lofty.

And as it turned out, Kirp, who is a former Confederate officer, knew "Bandy" from the Civil War days. What are the odds?

The book jumps back and forth in time quite a bit which got me a little confused at times.

Everyone squawls a lot. There is an awful lot of squawling.

There's a really liberal use of the word "cute" as an insult. (Mind you, the word "liberal" is an insult in itself, too, so I've heard)

And a crazy final battle in the courtyard of Veldon Castle.

This, like the other licensed "Dollars Trilogy" fanfictions, was rushed out to cash in on the movies and therefore doesn't feel like a story that the Man with No Name belongs in.
Still, this is one wild story. It's kind of fantastical. If you're into that sort of thing.

Cowboys and knights. I never thought of those two elements going together.

Silver Canyon by Louis L'Amour (1951 - 1956)

My first Louis L'Amour story! I'd describe this as 'Flaming Irons' with cattle, and better.

Illustrator unknown

It was first published as Riders of the Dawn in an issue of Giant Western in 1951, but it was expanded in novel form in 1956.

The book is hard to get into at first, because there's so many characters to be introduced to all at once, but once the story gets going it becomes a gripping, tightly plotted adventure.

Gunfighter Mathieu Brennan rides into Hattan's Point, into the middle of a ranch war between the Maclarens and the Pinders over the Two-Bar ranch, owned by an old man named Ball. While at Hattan's point, Matt falls in love with Maclaren's daughter Moira and immediately decides to marry her, despite the fact that they've only just met.

Matt visits Ball and is taken under the old man's wing, but soon after a visit to the Benaras family (a forgettable family who serve as reliable allies) Ball is killed, and Matt swears revenge.

I liked how even though the main character was an experienced shot and tough guy, he has his own weaknesses which he makes up for in tenacity. Realistically after a gunfight he takes ages to recover, yet he's still smart, strong and always picks the perfect places for attack and defense. He's sort of like a cowboy John McClane but younger.

For another ally he has small, strong, lovable Irish wrestler Brian Mulvaney, a trusted confidant. I enjoyed reading about him and part of what kept me engaged was the hope that he'd live in the end. I do wish he was fleshed out a little more, though.

There's also Canaval, who is pretty cool sadly underused in the story.

The love interest, Moira, is competently written and has some good moments but she's mostly a typical love interest in an adventure story, a man's idea of what a woman is like. The moment Matt meets her and declares he's going to marry her, she reacts with an anger and outrage, but an anger that is almost superficial and turns into curiosity.
The quote follows: "I'd have gotten exactly nowhere, but now she would be curious, and there is no trait that women possess more fortunate for men." I only wonder what kind of message that sends to women, or men attracted to women, for that matter.
She isn't completely weak, and even actively helps him once or twice, but in the end she's just a prize for Brennan to win, and there's barely anything she does in the novel that doesn't revolve around him.

The supporting characters are pretty forgettable. What was Key Chapin's role again?

Some of them are unevenly described. Is Morgan Park's face handsome or ugly? It's hard to picture him properly. L'Amour keeps going on about his tiny feet. I know it's an important plot point, but does he have to keep bringing him up?
Oh, and he's also after Moira, which just makes her a prize to be won. Not as egregiously as the woman at the end of Flaming Irons, though.

Park, The Slades, Miller and Booker are all two-dimensional antagonists. There's not even any entertainment value to them.

This is an engaging story that unfolds with enough twists and turns to keep you guessing. It even becomes a bit of a whodunit mystery somewhere around the middle of the book. Sometimes the plot can get convoluted but some loose ends are tied in the end.

I'm not normally interested in stories about cattle businesses. I've seen so many movies about cattle drives. But this novel held my interest and I recommend it. It has a lot of atmosphere and emotion.

Flaming Irons by Max Brand (1927)

Behold, the Western novel with no plot!

It started as a serialization in 1927 called The City in the Sky, and from that it was immediately obvious that Brand was making it up as he went along.

At least it had a promising beginning.

It starts with a young horse in danger of drowning in mud, and honestly this is the part with the most suspense in the entire story, as Joe Tarron rushes home to wake his lazy brother Les, the only one who can save the poor creature.
And in an amazing feat of strength, he does! That's pretty cool.

So after Les minds his own business on the farm, another novel passes through. I mean, a group of men on the hunt, lead by a man named Ingram, for a guy named Dorn, whom we learn is carrying a secret plot device with him. There's a lot of confusing hoo-ha about Ingram wanting Les' recently-rescued horse, involving a horse race, and a bet, and finally Ingram buys the horse, and Les goes along with him. What the huh?

The gang go off into the mountains and find a half-naked Dorn trying to escape, but Les betrays the group to save Dorn.

And surprisingly, Les is very expert in helping him. He's never been out in the world on his own before and yet he has these amazing stealth, tracking and survival skills. Was Brand's intention for Les to be this ideal action hero?

At least Les makes a few tiny little mistakes. While camping on the hill, he leaves Dorn all by himself and goes into town to get horses for them all. He is tested by the proprietor to see which horse is his, and spots it like that. I'll give that to him. he's an expert on horses.
But then he runs into Ingram, claiming Les stole his horse from him. If he had kept the horse for himself in the first place he wouldn't have this problem. Especially when he gets himself recognised after trying to pass himself off as Dorn's son.
He almost gets arrested, breaks out, manages to get the proprietor's horse and makes his way back to the camp with little consequence whatsoever, except that he's now a man on the run, but just because he's helping Dorn. He even manages to sneak out the plot device hidden in Dorn's belt. And he manages to be good at stealing food, too.

Dorn and Les then travel to the town of Santa Trista, on their way to La Paz. Dorn is convinced they'd be safe there, but Les isn't so sure. Santa Trista is one of those ancient Mexican towns so remote and hidden that electricity doesn't even work there. As far as Dorn is convinced, what are the chances of a murderous gang ever finding them there?

Surprise, surprise, Dorn is killed, while Les, who was hidden, is bent on revenge. Fair enough.
The one responsible for this, and for stealing the special plot device inside the belt, is a criminal named Quexada. Sounds like an important sounding special kind of guy, but he's barely in this novel and only lasts a chapter or two. He's intelligent and looks and sounds noble, but that's it. Little to no presence of his own whatsoever.

Almost as underdeveloped is the nameless landlord, depicted on the cover, that Les takes with him to Quexada. He's one of those characters whom you aren't sure is a double or a triple agent. Brand doesn't show you enough of him to find out and just wastes him.

When Les kills Quexada, he does it with calm unconcern. His first time killing a man and he's not taken aback once by it. Also, shouldn't it have been more difficult for him? Quexada had the potential to be a cool adversary but he wasn't.

After Brand goes into detail about how pretty the box is, he sends Les on his way to La Paz. Except that nobody has heard of it. They've heard of "Santa Maria", not "La Paz". It's almost obvious as to what the town is really called: Santa Maria de La Paz. Since Les is so smart he could have figured that out for himself.

On his way Les meets an old man, Pedro Gregorio, and the suspicious Lucia who tries to poison Les with food. Make that of what you will. Maybe because Les is an outlaw now, I can't tell. I don't understand what she found so suspicious about him. She makes Alicia from South of Rio Grande look hospitable.

Les shoots down the famous Silvio Oñate while looking for this city, and sadly Silvio is in this book for so little that he's almost indistinguishable from Quexada.

It turns out the real villain of the book is not Ingram, or Quexada, or Oñate but the gang boss Robert Langhorne, who wants the box, the plot device, because it has a map to a mine or something. A mine which the natives had closed when the Conquistadores arrived.

And chases ensue. Lots and lots and lots of chases. Chases that go on for an indiscriminate number of chapters. And he practically escapes unscathed and expertly from all these men after him. This is a boy who has had no experience of adventure before, people. Once he gets to Santa Maria de la Paz he manages to sneak into Langhorne's house, only to get out again and meets Alvarado whom the plot device was supposed to be transported to... and is welcomed as a hero, a hero of Mexicans and marries a pretty girl named Anna Maria Alvarado. Finally Langhorne conveniently kills himself and Les guns down Ingram after years.

So, in short, a bunch of stuff happened. None of which ties together as a coherent story.

I've tried to explain this one as best as I can because it is a huge mess. The plot goes all over the place, the characters come and go without us ever getting to know them properly (if they're Mexican, they're often the biggest offenders of this), there's hardly any development and the whole thing is so padded out with chases that I stopped caring any more. There could have been some good adversaries there, but they're not in it long enough to really develop.
I find it unbelievable that for a young man's first time out in the world, he guns down at least two notorious criminals. I know he's strong but he's supposed to be inexperienced, having grown up on a farm all his life, and sometimes strength isn't enough.
The book also rambles on and on about something or other and I have no time for that. I guess that because it was serialized Brand was being paid by the word and so had to drag it out each issue.
It also doesn't explain anything until the end, which makes you wonder if it was supposed to be a mystery, or an adventure, or both.
At least there are a few quiet, peaceful moments in the beginning. Those were nice.

Other than that, this book is really not worth it. It's a complete mess.

South of Rio Grande by Max Brand (1936)

Cover illustration by Jack Thornton. Spoiler warning: the man on the cover is not a character in this novel.

I enjoyed this one a lot and I highly recommend it.

Joe Warder, the gunman and jailbird, is hired to go down to Mexico to bring back the bandit chief El Tigre. Seems simple enough. However, a young Irish man named Dennis MacMore is tagging along for the ride, looking for his brother Patrick, whom he praises and admires, and who is in the very same town that El Tigre is operating in, the town of San Clemente.

It seems that young Denny is way in over his head. He's unskilled, inexperienced and generally a burden on the mission. He reads and sings, but that amounts to too little. Joe is already too far ahead to send the boy back; he'd already saved him from a mugger named Pedro Oñate (Cool name!) and wasn't going to risk leaving him alone again.

Fortunately, where Dennis lacks in survival skills he makes up for in gumption. After Joe is pursued by a gang of horsemen, Dennis, who is behind them and who is a lousy shot on an emaciated horse, goes charging after them, firing a rifle wildly, and saves Joe's life, therefore earning his right to accompany Joe on the search for El Tigre, and also for Patrick MacMore. It won't be easy, but together the two just might be able to make it.

This book had me hooked right from the start. Sometimes you can easily guess what's going to happen, sometimes not. There's one character in the novel whom you can't even tell is good or not, all you know is that he's really cool, and very memorable.

Our narrator, Joe Warder, is strong and heroic, but very human and sympathetic. He's terrified of hunting for El Tigre and is constantly wary of the perilous journey he is embarking on. I like his self-deprecation, that's a nice touch. More than once he mentions his broken nose and smashed up face. And I love the way he regards everything with a degree of disbelief. Often throughout he essentially says, "I can't believe I'm writing this, but it actually happened."

But the story belongs to Dennis MacMore, a truly unique character in a work of Western literature. He's plucky, although inexperienced. He's impulsive and a hopeless romantic, but resourceful and intelligent. He is the heart and soul of South of Rio Grande. Brand has created a truly well rounded character here.

Even his love interest, La Carmelita, doesn't shy away from the action. Though she is young, she carries herself like a queen. She may be in distress, but she's not weak. And though she is even more experienced than Dennis, she is a brave fighter. I was pleasantly surprised by her and her development as a whole. She beats down a guy with a broken oar in one scene!
She has a reputation for being the most beautiful woman in San Clemente, and I can only picture a sweeter, Mexican Crimson O'Hairoil in my imagination.

Joe himself seems to be attracted to strong young women. After hearing about General Pinzon's daughter and how helpful she was to Dennis, Joe decides that although he's forty two and has a broken nose, and she's reportedly not attractive, he'd totally do her. That's what he essentially said. He also appears to have the hots for La Carmelita as well, even though she's also young enough to be his daughter. Moving along.

The action itself is taut and tightly paced. The whole thing kept me guessing. I found it that difficult to put it down.

The descriptions of the setting are lush and vivid, from the desert, to the streets of San Clemente, to the moonlit river and Alvarado gardens.

One or two problems with it, though. First of all, this is not recommended for any Asian readers. One small scene with "the Chink waiter" is enough to put anyone off even a bit.

Any Mexican readers might be offended as well, especially when reading about ones like the Guadalupe family, but Joe tries to explain that he doesn't think they're all a bad lot. "When they're bad, they're poison. When they're good, they furnish you with a finer type of gentlemen than any I've ever seen from Texas to Montana". And indeed San Clemente is full of a diverse range of characters. For every Pedro Oñate and Jose Guadalupe, there are noble, helpful and decent characters such as Orthez, the Pinzon family and, again, La Carmelita, who is rumoured to be a maneater but who is good as gold.

The second problem is that the ending has a twist in it which doesn't make any sense and very nearly ruined such an enjoyable piece of work for me. It's not only disappointing, it's improbable as well.

Anyway, it's an exciting adventure with vivid imagery, colourful characters and one twist after another. I don't want to spoil too much because for most part, it's that good of a ride, that good of a journey into a new and exciting world.

A Coffin Full of Dollars by Joe Millard (1971)

And we're back!

I don't know why Manco looks so young. He's got to be about sixty-something in this story.

This is the second Man with No Name spinoff novel/licensed fanfiction I ever read. Since it presumably takes place about 20 years after For a Few Dollars More, the Man with No Name is Manco at this point.
I have to say, I enjoyed this one more than A Dollar to Die For. I found it as an eBook on Scribd and read it from beginning to end on my phone.

While going about his bounty hunter business and turning in the corpse of "No Nose" Megley, the circus comes to town.

Yes, you heard that right. Well, it's not terribly out of place in a Western story. This circus is led by Dandy Deever, gambler, con man and family man whose wife and children, as well as a trumpeter who might be black but I'm not sure, are travelling by with their animals, including a very true-to-nature old lion.

So Manco gets his ticket to the circus, and Dandy confides in him that he's actually a pickpocket. I really like Dandy, actually. He's one of the most entertaining characters in the novel.

Standing in the crowd, a distance away from Manco is... dun dun dun... Lee van Cleef! Or one of many Lee van Cleefs that we see in this series of novels, anyway. This one is his rival, Shadrach, who is faster to gun down the bounties and collect them than Manco could ever hope to be.
I kind of like it that as superhuman as Manco's skills are, as flawlessly as he can shoot a rope from at least fifty feet away, he still has a rival, someone to bring him down from his lofty status as the best gunman in the world. Then again, he must be in about his sixties by now, and his body might be giving up on him, who knows? He is played in the movies by a fantastic stuntman.

I say all this because the story seems to take place in the 1890s, and when Manco comes across the trumpeter, he mentions to him that what he's playing is something they call "jazz", which didn't start until at least 1895. I'm just nitpicking here.

While the show starts, the show is interrupted by a couple of wasted thugs whom Manco has time and space to pick off after they start making advances towards Dandy's wife and daughter. These thugs belonged to the mestizo bandit chief Apachito ("half-Apache, half-Comanchero and all poison mean)".  Apachito himself is the other most entertaining character in the novella. Burly, cocky and sadistic, and very credibly dangerous. He's a man with attitude and I loved every moment of it. I also found it funny how easily he was scared off by that moth-eaten old lion.

However, his physical description leaves something to be desired. He's described as "squat" and "thick-bodied", but Millard goes into little to no detail about his facial features. Why is he described in such a vague manner compared to Shadrach?

So anyway, after Manco saves Dandy's family, he agrees to go on tour with them and do a shooting act.

I can't believe I just said that.

Isn't that a waste of bullets? He needs those for his work. Or some way to make money.

I'm having a lot of trouble imagining Manco on stage right now.

The circus troupe passes through the rough and tough town of Hangville, a haven for criminals and such. Apachito shows up for the first time, and Shadrach also turns up, forcing him and Manco into an alliance. They evacuate money from the bank before Apachito and his gang can get their hands on it. And it appears that Dandy has hidden the dollars in the trick coffin, hence the title.

The novella has mostly original characters in it so Millard doesn't raise too many eyebrows of devoted fans.

The one thing that's really out of character is that Manco talks too much. As a rule he only says what really needs to be said and takes a secret delight in being smarter than everyone else.

Also, there's a scene where he dreams about his own past, way back even before he was Blondie (or Whitey, as Millard once called him for some reason). That bothers me because it ruins the mystery of who he is, what he is or where he came from. We don't know that he was ever a ranch hand.

There is another scene that wasn't needed, where Manco gets into trouble with the people of Hangville, almost gets arrested, escapes, kills an outlaw and then he and Shadrach continue their journey like nothing happened. That scene went nowhere.

The supporting characters are a lot of fun, though. Shadrach, Dandy and Apachito are all a delight to read about. The action sequences, while a bit silly, are also very creative.

It also seems that Manco and Shadrach have a nice little bromance going on. Maybe it's just me but they are a little too open about each other's personal habits.

A Coffin Full of Dollars at best is just an entertaining adventure story, if you can get past the fact that it was hurriedly written to make money off of a popular trilogy. I think it has a lot to offer.

A Dollar to Die For by Brian Fox (1967)

Those two on either side of Blondie are definitely not in the review.

As you know, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is my all time favourite movie. It's a beautifully crafted masterpiece, and the main character, the lovable thief and outlaw Tuco Ramirez, is very close to my heart and has inspired me immensely in my artwork and self expression. What's more, Eli Wallach is, to say the least, a triumph in the role. So when I learned that there were spinoff novels and he was in one of them, I was nervous, excited, anxious and finally bought my copy, and first read it in October 2015.

The Dollars Trilogy movies were always going to be a hard act to follow, especially when the novels were written in a short amount of time to capitalize on the movies' success. They were basically licensed fanfiction.

This book isn't the worst thing I've read as far as Western pulp novels go, but it does have a lot of problems.

First of all, the book is not as humorous as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It's very dramatic and violent, with a lot of double crossing from different directions and a very strange Apache torture device.
Second, Blondie and Tuco have very few scenes together, for those that miss the violent bromance that they shared in the film.

The story introduces us first to the Man with No Name, bringing in an outlaw for the money and then freeing him, as he did with Tuco. I guess the scam just keeps being a good idea for him. He's out to capture a presumably "half-Apache" criminal named Pinky Roebuck, who has the distinction of being a charismatic Albino.
The MacGuffin of the story is the gold that the Count de Cabronet failed to send puppet Emperor Maximilian to save his life. I like the presentation of authority brutality in the story. There's a short scene where the greedy and corrupt governor kills the guard who had slipped Maximilian the note telling him he would be saved while torturing him for information. It's a nice demonstration how in such a huge political crisis, no side is innocent.

On that note, despite supporting a capitalist dictatorship, the Count de Cabronet is far too benevolent to be considered a threat. De Cabronet reminds me of the Baxters from 'A Fistful of Dollars'. Apart from attempting to free the pawn of a tyrant, who is portrayed in a sympathetic light here, he doesn't really do anything all that bad towards the other couple of guys. In fact, greed and dodgy political views aside, he's about Blondie's moral level. No wonder the bounty hunter trusts him.
The Mexican Army is out to recover the money, and Sgt. Tuco Ramirez is among them. That part surprised me. Those who have seen him in GBU will know that Tuco is not a political man, and finds war and rebellion just an obstacle in the way of money. He wouldn't sign up as a soldier, at least not enlisting using his real name ("One name is as good as another. Not wise to use your own name.") . He's too two-faced for that and he knows it. He knows better than to risk being caught and executed for treason. One of his charges did list him as "misrespresenting a Mexican general", but it's likely that he made that up to raise the bounty when he and Blondie were doing their scam together. And I doubt he would commit the same crime twice, or not twice in the same place.

I preferred Tuco when he was just a tinhorn bandit. He was the constant victim of pratfalls and outright horrible luck. He constantly got tied up, nearly hanged and then left behind in the desert only to start mouthing off like he had suffered a breakup. And his obsessive determined revenge against Blondie, like that of a rejected lover, was a distinguishing and relatable feature, and so petty it was hilarious.  The fact that he's so down and out was a constant source of humor, and I think that if Brian Fox had taken a different creative direction he'd have made the book as funny as the movie that inspired it.
Reading this, I feel like he's changed so much that I barely recognize him anymore.
He's still energetic and very entertaining to read about, but I think he could have suffered a little more consistently. We could have laughed at him a bit more. His humour is what makes him one of the greatest movie characters of all time.
Also, Fox is mean to him. He calls him ugly constantly. I know that's his designation, but the point is he's ugly on the inside. And Eli Wallach was one handsome fellow, up until the age of about 60.

After killing De Cabronet's men, Sgt. Ramirez and his fellow bandits murder members of their own company, and Tuco promotes himself to General. As highly as he thinks of himself, he wouldn't go shouting that out in a forest. He'd know that he'd get caught and somebody would be listening. Even joining the army in the first place is out of character for him, or at least lasting in the army without getting fired for speaking out of turn or something.
Another thing, he keeps calling himself Tuco the Terrible. Yeah, that caught on really well.
While that went on, Blondie captures Pinky Roebuck, who is a fairly interesting character, if not merely delightfully evil. He's like this charismatic Giuliano Gemma type, only, you know, a terrifying albino. They find De Cabronet with his throat cut, but alive, so Blondie saves his life and the Count informs them about the gold that Tuco and his buddies made off with.
Meanwhile "General Tuco", having hidden De Cabronet's gold in various places and replaced the money in his men's bags with rocks, is out partying, and passes out by the well. This little gaffe that the bandit makes is one of a few moments where Fox actually does get the character down.
Apaches attack the town, kill Tuco's men and take him hostage, mistaking him for someone more important than he really is.
Pinky arrives, interrogates him, and despite the fact that Tuco is frightened out of his wits, we are aware Fox has abstained from him most of his own humanity. However find out that Roebuck's going to double-cross Blondie as well to get the gold for himself.

And here's where it gets weird. The book has this bit where Apaches would stake their prisoner on an anthill and have ants eat them alive. I don't know if that's a real Apache form of torture or not. It sounds really made up. Maybe Fox was racist against Native Americans, I dunno. It seemed really pointless for the Count de Cabronet to arrive with his sword (which Tuco conveniently left behind trying to fend off Apaches), and kill a bunch of guys who explicitly aren't interested in gold.
I think at this point I'd have instead had Blondie and Tuco, tied together against a tree, attempt to get out, instead of having Apaches slash their shoulders with spears as they remained trussed up there. That would have been true to the spirit of their relationship. Then they'd have had a chance to turn on Pinky together. That I'd have liked to see.
But no, instead Blondie had to have that ant thing happen to him, almost, so that this Cabronet he trusts can save him.

Meanwhile Pinky is leading the captive Tuco through the desert and the poor bandit is starved half to death. That big beautiful body of his (which Fox doesn't speak of so favourably) has pretty much shrunk as he bravely refuses to tell Pinky where he hid the money. He's depressed and drained of energy, and at this point, we really feel bad for him.
It's sort of the same thing that Tuco himself had put Blondie through in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, only the physical effects on him are described to be much worse. 
It also recalls the horrible beating that he took in the Union camp on orders from Angel Eyes, and yet again here he gets his revenge.
We start to root for him as he turns the tables on the albino Apache, tying him to a tree and making off with the gold. If I were Tuco, I'd have killed Roebuck for what he did to me.

What I like about the book is that there's moments of peace. There's moments where our bandido can just kick back and relax and once more, you feel it with him. You feel his health returning and you can't help but smile with him.
Yes, I'm in love with him, can't you tell?

There are few funny moments in the novel, but one is where he's dreaming that a beautiful woman is touching his shoulder when really it's Captain Alvarez. You can just picture his expression, a goofy, sleepy smile morphing into a mask of dread.

The last act of the book was rather weak.
Tuco is found by Captain Alvarez and promoted to Lieutenant, then found by Blondie. The book mentions Pablo in passing, although not by name, as "one of [Tuco's] brothers". I know I sound like a purist for the movie but it worked better when Pablo was his only brother. It makes them feel closer somehow.

Blondie and Tuco kill the Mexican soldiers to get to the gold and it's all a confusing mess. De Cabronet joins the fight, but his leg gets wounded, and Pinky and Tuco get turned in for their crimes against humanity. I don't understand why Pinky had to survive, other than the fact that Blondie is all too generous. We know the guy is worse than the Apaches, and yet the Apaches die for their trouble.
Good news is, Blondie yanks open the jail cell window because he feels that "a world without Tuco would be far less interesting." I knew it! He does feel something for him!

This book was just okay. Not good, not bad. But it has serious problems with characterisation, the most glaring example being Tuco. Fox gets a fair grasp of his personality but chooses to portray him as more of a stereotypical bandido than the complex, morally ambiguous figure he is. Also, he doesn't call Blondie "Blondie". I wonder why Fox made that choice.

Speaking of Blondie, Fox makes better sense of his personality, but there is one issue. Why does he accept that spiked drink from the Count de Cabronet? He would be streetwise enough not to do a thing like that.

The plotting doesn't go as all over the place as something like Flaming Irons. It does have something close to a beginning, a middle and an end.

Like I've said, although it's licensed,  it's nothing more than just glorified fanfiction.

Not as good as it could have been, but if you're really curious, maybe check it out.

Also, it inspired an animation from me! A short, pencil one, anyway. This one's called Tuco in Tyopa, and it depicts the scene where he's collapsed by the well in a deep, drunken slumber, and wakes up to find the town being sacked by Apaches!

Here's the Vimeo link in case it doesn't play very well.

https://vimeo.com/167015752

Welcome to New to Me Western Reviews!

This is the blog where I review vintage Western literature, mostly obscure. They're old, but they're new to me. The first post will be a repost from my other blog, Now That I Have Nobody's Attention, my review of A Dollar to Die For, but the rest of the reviews will be entirely new. Enjoy!