New on My Shelves

You've got to love used book stores and all the treasures they offer.

And a happy Ides of March, everyone.

Trail Drive to Montana (Gunsmith #69) by Gary McCarthy writing as J.R. Roberts

Regular readers of this repository of reviews will likely know that I am a big fan of The Gunsmith, which is the only long-running adult Western series still primarily written by a single author under a pseudonym, in this case Robert J. Randisi under the moniker J. R. Roberts. However, he has not written all of them. Randisi stated in a 2007 interview with Saddlebums Western Review that his publisher early on wanted more books than he could turn out on his own. Thus, around 30 of the first 100 were contracted from other authors to fulfill the twelve-a-year quota.

Later, I learned from an interview on Western Fiction Review that author Gary McCarthy, who had written a book I had recently enjoyed called The Pony Express War, had been one of those writers. (He reportedly wrote four Gunsmith novels.) As I enjoy cattle-drive novels, I chose McCarthy's first for the series, Trail Drive to Montana, to see if I could detect a difference in styles.

Actually, it was easy. From page one of Trail Drive to Montana, I would at least have known that it was not from the usual author. Randisi has a fast-paced, easy reading style that utilizes punchy dialogue and short, sharp paragraphs. The first paragraph of this book has 20 lines of small text, and there's no real conversation for five pages. This is not a criticism of either style, merely an illustration of how different they are.

McCarthy shows you the whole picture, and this slows things down a bit compared to the norm for this series, but I must admit to the appeal of seeing ex-lawman and professional gunsmith Clint Adams being genuinely articulate instead of simply a man of action. Even the heroine remarks, "You got a fine way with words, Mr. Adams."

She is Mandy Roe, whom Adams discovers after her horse is killed and she is left stranded underneath it. Her father is Bart Roe, the former outlaw pardoned by the governor and now an innovative cattle breeder in his 80s, who still has as fiery a temper as ever. Or, as Clint says, "He's the craziest old son of a bitch I ever saw in my life." (Having a way with words means you sometimes get right to the point.)

The Roes need to drive their herd of special crossbreeds up to Montana, away from the vengeful Moffit clan, seeking revenge for a 25-year-old transgression. The Gunsmith, in no way a cowboy and actually quite proud of the fact, agrees to accompany them on the journey. Unlike typical Texas longhorns, who are known as "rainbow cattle" for the variety of their hues, the Roe herd is exceptionally uniform in size and color, selected for those attributes in the breeding process.

Dr. Thomas Thom, Bart Roe's brother-in-law and an equal partner in the breeding, makes a connection between the longhorns and Americans. As he puts it, "Crossbreeding almost always results in a more vigorous strain of beef. It accounts for much of the American drive and energy. You see, this country is the greatest bunch of crossbred people in the world.... We are not in-bred like many of the old-line European families. We have greater vigor. So does this herd."

McCarthy fills Trail Drive to Montana with the expected level of action (of both types), and an additonal level of description that makes for a richer read than the typical series novel. He is quickly working his way toward an entry on my list of favorite authors, and I look forward to reading more of his work.

Further reading: For another adult Western series novel about a cattle drive, read Longarm on the Goodnight Trail. For other novels on the subject, Ralph Compton's Trail Drive series, starting with The Goodnight Trail, is also a winner. And of course, there's the epic of all Westerns, Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize–winning Lonesome Dove, which also centers around a trail drive.

Vendetta by Ed Gorman (Western noir)

Father Pete Madsen's best friend Noah Greaves was released from prison and was subsequently killed trying to exact revenge on the one reason he was there: Tom Radigan. Noah's daughter Joan decides to finish what her father set out to do, but that's not the only revenge being enacted in Vendetta. Simple stories are not author Ed Gorman's stock in trade.

Vendetta beautifully showcases Gorman's skill at characterization through various lengthy passages from different points of view. In this way, we more closely follow the actions of Joan Greaves; her quarry, Radigan; his lover, Caroline Petty; her husband, chief of police Walter Petty; his assistant chief, Red Carney; and bank-robbing brothers, Carl and Leonard Schmidt.

Gorman puts the reader inside his characters' heads and gives us access to their most private thoughts. All the while offering suspenseful narrative that leaves questions unanswered until the reader is simply aching to find out how these complex and interconnected relationships will out.

His ability to make the villain of one story into the tragic hero of another only enhances the reader's involvement in the tale. The centerpiece of Vendetta, a 4-hour bank robbery, brings all the characters together in one place and brings their tensions to a head. The ending floored me.

Best of all, Vendetta is a story that could be set in any time or place. The events are universal and timeless. That Gorman has set it in the Old West merely allows the author to utilize aspects specific to the era while showing that people really haven't changed all that much. It will appeal to fans of Westerns and crime fiction (given that Gorman calls his style "Western noir") or any enthusiasts of solid storytelling. (Fans of modern westerns will appreciate the cameo from a gunsmith named "J.R. Randisi.")

Reader of the unabridged audiobook, Scott Brick's dysthymic delivery is perfect for Gorman's tight prose. Brick is one of my favorite all-around audiobook readers due to his ability to avoid inserting himself into the story; he's a fresh canvas primed for any material, and offers a letter-perfect interpretation of Vendetta.

The Scarlet Gun (Gunsmith #44) by Robert J. Randisi writing as J.R. Roberts (Western series)

Clint Adams's stopover in Hedgemont with Sheena O'Shay had an unexpected effect. Learning that Adams was the famous Gunsmith led her 20-year-old brother Danny to be a gunfighter. Now Danny has run off, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake, and Sheena wants Clint to stop him before someone else does, with a bullet.

Meanwhile, another beautiful Irish redhead known only as Scarlet is out for the blood of the five men who "destroyed her family and snatched her innocence." She's already killed two, and the next one on her list is John Titus, who has just hired Danny as a bodyguard of sorts. Leave it to Clint to satisfy the needs of both women in The Scarlet Gun — the forty-fourth in the long-running Gunsmith series — and in more than one way (including one sequence that spans ten pages).

It's always a pleasure to settle in with one of the Gunsmith novels written by author Robert J. Randisi, who is also a writer of terrific private-eye fiction. (The series has been published under the name "J.R. Roberts," a pseudonym of Randisi's and not a house name like other monthly Western series such as The Trailsman or Slocum, since its inception in 1982.) He has a very fast-paced and visual style that makes each novel a flawlessly easy read. Randisi has written over 300 of these books now, and I'm consistently amazed at how he continues to innovate, even in more recent ones like East of the River.

But I think these earlier Gunsmith entries like The Scarlet Gun are my favorites. I especially like how he gives Clint Adams a trackable memory in them. When there were still fewer than a hundred, and no so many plot to keep track of, Randisi would have the current story reference past novels — a very clever marketing tactic. In this one, Adams remembers or discusses events or characters from no less than seven other Gunsmith books: Dead Man's Hand (#14), Killer Grizzly (#24), North of the Border (#25), Trouble Rides a Fast Horse (#31), The Bounty Women (#35), The El Paso Salt War (#39), and Hell with a Pistol (#41). This adds to the fun and, of course, makes me eager to try out the other books.

East of the River (The Gunsmith #328) by Robert J. Randisi writing as J.R. Roberts (Western series)

Clint Adams, better known as the Gunsmith, knows he's in for trouble whenever he goes east of the Mississippi, but a high-stakes poker game in Ajax, Indiana, is too good to pass up. When he finds it's been called off, he's irked, but you can't reasonably expect to receive a telegram when you're constantly on the move. His ersatz host recommends the nearby town of Dexter, where Clint gets himself embroiled in a Deputy U.S. Marshal's search for evidence against some local bank robbers.

I don't know what money Clint lives on; he doesn't seem to be selling guns like he did in the earlier books in the series. [Update: see author comment.] But he helps out at least 3 people in this story and sees not a cent from any of them, apart from the occasional free beer or roll in the hay. But suspension of disbelief notwithstanding, author J.R. Roberts (in reality Robert J. Randisi) has produced yet another entertaining page-turner with East of the River.

Roberts/Randisi has a very visual style that could easily translate to the screen. The author even changes perspective often during action scenes — as if he were editing the program "in the camera," so to speak — which keeps the mind alert. In general, he doesn't linger on a scene; he has his characters tell us what we need to know, and he moves on. I read the whole of East of the River in about ninety minutes.

Which brings me to my only complaint regarding this book: it's just too short. The story is thin and wouldn't stand for much expansion, but calling East of the River a novel is a stretch, even compared to other entries in the series. The large type, wide margins, and the fact that all the chapters begin on the right-hand page (very often leaving a blank facing page) all suggest that even the publisher had a hard time getting it to look like a book worth paying six dollars for. And there may lie the issue in a nutshell: I don't usually pay full price for books, but when I do, I want to feel I got my money's worth.

Luckily, Randisi is an always entertaining and sometimes even innovative writer. Possibly in response to those readers of series Westerns who complain that the obligatory sex scenes get in the way of the story (or even stop it cold), in East of the River he has cross-cut a scene of one kind of action with a scene of another kind, folding them together like the cards in a shuffling deck. Just one more reason that The Gunsmith is my favorite Western series.

Killer Grizzly (The Gunsmith #24) by Robert J. Randisi writing as J.R. Roberts (Western series)

When a wheel on his rig breaks, Clint Adams — a.k.a. The Gunsmith, an ex-lawman with a well-known reputation — is stranded in the town of Bear Pass, Wyoming, while it is fixed. Adams laments being stuck, but before long a Killer Grizzly known as "Ol' Three-Paw" appears and destroys his horse team, making things immediately more interesting.

A reward is soon offered by Calvin Lockman, the local bigwig, for the death (with proof) of the giant grizzly bear — Ol' Three-Paw seems to like eating Lockman's cows. So the Gunsmith is on the hunt — despite the protestations of hotel mistress Dorian Ward, who says Ol' Three-Paw killed her husband and followed her here from Montana. Though it is thought that the money will bring all the amateurs out of the woodwork, Adams's only competition is Lacy Blake, a beautiful bounty hunter who heard about the reward. Will they compete against each other or decide to join forces?

One trait about the Gunsmith series that invariably brings a smile is how the author's business sense comes out. After referring to characters or events in past storylines, Randisi includes a footnote naming the other volume in which it appeared. For example, in Killer Grizzly, Adams thinks the Parker-Hale game rifle would be best to use on Ol' Three-Paw since it was so effective in taking down Big Foot (in book #21, Sasquatch Hunt). (A poker game also reminds him of the events in book #13, Draw to an Inside Death. I think you get the idea.) This is probably the best way I've seen yet to get a reader to buy other books in a series.

Killer Grizzly and its brethren are perfect back-pocket reads. The stories are fast-paced and told simply, and the short chapters make them easy to dip into at any free moment. Most appealing, however, is how Roberts / Randisi offers a heavy dose of tongue-in-cheek humor along with the sex and violence expected in "The All-Action Western Series." He doesn't take himself too seriously (he had his hero hunting down Big Foot, for Pete's sake!), making for an all-around pleasurable reading experience.