Re: RARA-AVIS: Fredric Brown, Leigh Brackett and a question.

From: Doug Bassett ( dj_bassett@yahoo.com)
Date: 08 Jan 2000


--- David Bell < belldj@muohio.edu> wrote:
>
> Along the same lines, are there any authors who
> write hard-boiled westerns? I
> know Leonard has written them, and Charles Willeford
> wrote one. Anyone else?

I've just started reading Westerns, but I've already noticed that they exist on a sort of spectrum. At one end they edge into historical fiction; at the other they edge into the hardboiled.

I've only read a handful of Westerns, but some of them are certainly hardboiled. Loren Estleman has written a number of very good, very tough books on the old West; I recommend his BLOODY SEASON. Some guy named Shepard Rifkin (anyone ever heard of him?)wrote an excellent, brutal Western called KING FISHER'S ROAD. Another guy named John Benteen (anyone ever heard of him? I think this is a pseudonym) wrote a couple of tough adventure series set in the Old West: I especially recommend the Fargo series, which is typically set in unusual times
(around the turn of the century) and in unusual places
(the Phillipenes, Guatamala).

I read somewhere that Lion Books used to publish a lot of tough, hb Westerns. One of these days I hope to find their title EAT DOG OR DIE.

You can find Westerns nowadays very easily in thrift stores, old paperback places, etc. It's a very neglected genre, which is kind of sad.

doug

===== Doug Bassett dj_bassett@yahoo.com
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