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!