Tuesday 7 March 2017

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.

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