THE BROTHERS O'BRIEN

Here's one I found over the Lincoln's Birthday weekend.  Had no idea this one was coming, so it was a nice surprise to come across.

Looking for this one to make bestseller lists, too.

THE LONER: INFERNO

The 11th - and newest - novel in THE LONER series by J. A. Johnstone.  Pinnacle continues to do some massively attractive cover art for these books.  Long may these books continue to be popular. 

THE FIRST MOUNTAIN MAN: PREACHER'S FURY

Congratulations to J.A. Johnstone, who recently posted on Facebook that this book has made its way onto the New York Times Bestseller List in the last week.   Good to see that the Western Novel has made a BIG comeback!

ASSAULT OF THE MOUNTAIN MAN

The newest book in the Mountain Man saga.  Gotta take my hat off to J.A. Johnstone for keeping Bill Johnstone's legacy alive and well. 

This will be my first real look into the world of the Mountain Man series - does anyone who reads this series think that it's ok to start with this one?  Please either comment or leave me an e-mail.  Thanks!

And thanks especially to J.A. for sending this and autographing it for me!

THE LONER #11: CROSSFIRE

The newest chapter in the sage of "The Loner".

This one looks to have Conrad Browning (Kid Morgan) reuniting with his father, legendary gunfighter Frank Morgan.

The common purpose: rescuing Kid Morgan's young twins from a San Francisco crime lord who has "adopted" the children.

Have to discipline myself not to dive into this one right away because I've not read them all up to this point.  J.A. has informed me previously that it's a good idea to read them in order. 

A big thanks to J.A. Johnstone for sending this one along. 

EDGE #41: THE KILLING CLAIM

Edge inherits custody of a canine who prefers the taste of human flesh to anything else.  Guess they didn’t have cans of “Cycle 4” out on the range then.

FANCY HATCH #4: THE ODDS AGAINST SUNDOWN

And with this, the fourth book in the series, Fancy Hatch herself rode off into the sunset. 

Zachary Hawkes was Alan Riefe. 

CAVENAUGH'S REVENGE

This must have been a one-shot deal for Brian O’Neill.  Never saw his name again on a book (unless he was using pseudonyms). 

EDGE #13: THE HATED

Violence, violence, violence!  Oh, and some more violence on top of that.  But that’s one of the things that made the Edge books as fun as they were.  This entry in the series shows how to cut “Corners”.

BLOOD STORM

For a while, before the old Pinnacle Books went under, Matt Braun was their top selling Western Writer. 

BLOOD STORM came out with a blitz of publicity that Pinnacle didn’t usually do.  They packaged this book (and the ones which came after) very nicely. 

Matt is still out there and writing some excellent stories. 

Pinnacle Books re-grouped and came back with a vengeance and brought us such talents as Johnny D. Boggs and J. A. Johnstone.  It’s good to see that Westerns have returned to favor now.  Years from now, this will be considered another “Golden Age” when it comes to the Western.  Feel privileged to have seen it happen. 

THE LONER: BLOOD OF RENEGADES

The latest release in the J. A. Johnstone's series, "The Loner".  Upon my inquiry, J. A. advises that it is best to go ahead and read the books in numerical order as character details develop from book to book.  Following J. A.'s advice, I'm only on book four right now, so it will be some time before I get to this one. 

EDGE MEETS STEELE: TWO OF A KIND

Edge teams up with George G. Gilman’s other series character, Adam Steele, in the first of what would turn out to be three adventures. 

Edge always had the grim joke to crack and Steele usually had the last “word” in his own books.  Put ‘em together, as George did in this 1980 double-sized novel from Pinnacle, and you have some interesting action – and interaction. 

A real find for the fans of either series.

DIAMONDBACK

Hmm, ya think they were trying to sell this book to women readers by using a Tom Selleck doppelganger on the cover? 

The other bit of humor here is that the author got his “Pike Bishop” pseudonym from William Holden’s character in “The Wild Bunch”. 

SIDEWINDERS: DEADWOOD GULCH

A new (to me) series from William & J. A. Johnstone. 

I just got this one today, so I haven't been able to crack into it yet.  Pinnacle Books has done its usual nice packaging job here. 

The protagonists here are Scratch Morton and Bo Creel.  These boys are guarding a gold shipment to keep this one from slipping away like past ones have. 

There are always dead folks left at the scenes of the crimes, all of them bearing pitchfork marks, a sign of the "Devils of Deadwood" robber gang.  I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that these pitchfork fellas aren't just bored choirboys, but then neither, I imagine, are Scratch and Bo. 

Always happy to see another title in the Johnstone catalog and that J. A. is keeping Bill Johnstone's legacy alive. 

EDGE: THE PRISONERS

For those of you who may not be familiar with this series, the Edge books were – as the cover indicates – “The Most Violent Westerns in Print”.  Some of them even came with a “Warning – This story is not for the faint of heart” disclaimer on the first printed page of the book.  For good reason, too.

George G. Gilman (actually Britain’s very own Terry Harknett) created Edge as just the opposite of “warm and fuzzy” and succeeded on every possible level.  The anti-hero character, first created in the Eastwood “Man With No Name” Western movies, is a good way to describe Edge as well.  In fact, the comparisons to Spaghetti Westerns came fast and furious during Terry’s heyday of writing these books and probably long afterwards too as people discovered these stories in subsequent years. 

When I once asked George/Terry about his use of so-called “dark humor” and his use of puns as chapter closers, he told me that he wanted to be sure that the reader was in on the joke and that this was all written in fun.  None of it should be taken seriously as it is just entertainment and nothing more. Makes sense to me.

This particular story pits Edge against Indian Outlaw Joe Straw to see which one of them is least loveable.  I have to give the edge to Edge (so to speak) here because he lasted through 10 more Pinnacle Books (although the series ran much longer in England) while Joe, not surprisingly, meets an ironic end at the closing of THE PRISONERS. 

LEATHERHAND

This book was given to me by a friend while I was recuperating from having three impacted wisdom teeth removed in the spring of 1983 during a brief time at Cape May, New Jersey.  I probably wasn’t the only one amused by the fact that each of those three wisdom teeth were, in some way, retarded.  I was on the ward with three other guys who had the same type of oral surgery.  For a couple of days we all looked like chipmunks.  I was glad to finally wake up on the third day not having a bloody pillow stuck to my face.

Anyway, I was quite captivated by LEATHERHAND when I first read it.  Mike Wales was a new name to me in the field of Westerns and as it turned out, we became good friends via mail and the telephone.  We never did personally meet. 

LEATHERHAND lasted only 8 books, before Mike’s untimely death.  The last book, DARK NEMESIS, signaled a change in packaging and presentation and left me with an idea of where the series would have gone had Mike lived to continue it.

One day, out of the blue, I got a call from Mike’s adult son, Kenny Dalton, informing me of Mike’s death.  Apparently Mike had my number somewhere in his personal effects and Kenny called not only to tell me what had happened but to thank me for befriending his dad. 

I can’t imagine that any of the LEATHERHAND books will be easy for you to find, even in used book emporiums, because they were so good that people probably are holding on to them.  It would be a trip to see them find new life through another publisher, though.

FANCY HATCH

The Fancy Hatch series from Pinnacle Books only lasted through four novels.  Alan Riefe, who wrote as Jake Logan and J. D. Hardin, amongst many others, writes here as Zachary Hawkes. 

Fancy is quite liberated as you might be able to tell from the cover; of course the sexual overtones of her very name is a dead giveaway, too!

GUNMAN'S CURSE

This was a going away gift from Author Jory Sherman in late winter of 1982 as I was leaving home to go into the Coast Guard.  I don’t remember much about the book – I’ll need to re-read – but Pinnacle sure gave it a nice cover.