Dark Western Duality: The Magpie Coffin & Blood Meridian

Dark Western Duality: The Magpie Coffin & Blood Meridian by Mike Baker   I read The Magpie Coffin and Blood Meridian simultaneously, though that’s not entirely accurate—I started Blood Meridian a week ago, alongside a few other books. Much like crossing the great of Texas, there’s no quick way through Blood Meridian. The Magpie Coffin, by Wile E. Young, is the first entry in Death’s Head Press’s splatter western series and, from my casual review of general opinion, is considered the best of the lot. The story follows Salem Covington, who has made a deal—likely with the Devil—for a gun that renders him unkillable by any weapon except its twin, which is lost somewhere in the world. This gun demands that Salem fill a ledger with kills, making him a sort of reaper. If he meets the gun’s quota before the twin can find him, he can enter heaven blameless. The book opens with Salem’s Comanche teacher, Dead Bear, having been murdered along with a white buffalo, Dead Bear’s familiar, by five cavalrymen. Salem decides they must be killed next for vengeance and to satisfy the gun’s demands. He brings along a young soldier named Jake, who is half hostage, half acolyte, and a whore named Ruby, or something like Ruby. Jake knows one of the soon-to-be-dead men personally and can identify him. He brings Ruby because he saved her, and Salem finds that impulse—saving a life—somewhat novel and amusing. The narrative unfolds into a series of brutal, righteous killings, and a simple narrative mechanism allows you to anticipate Salem’s fatal flaw and where the story is headed. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; while originality makes for a great book, executing a well-worn concept with flair can still result in an entertaining read. Young may not be groundbreaking, but he is certainly engaging. Meanwhile, I’m reading Blood Meridian, the heavyweight champion of dark-hearted human brutality. By comparison, The Magpie Coffin’s “darkness and horror” feel like lightweight comic book fare. I began to look forward to Magpie’s “brutality” as a way to cleanse my palate of the absolute bleakness and wretchedness of Blood Meridian. I believe the love for Magpie stems from its well-crafted writing. Young understands the elements that make an entertaining western, and it is indeed gory af. However, if you’ve read any Piccadilly Cowboy material, excluding the supernatural elements in Magpie, you may find Magpie doesn’t cover new ground, unlike The Red Station or Cruel Angel Past Sundown, which, while structurally flawed, push the genre beyond mere horror and gore. I’m not saying this to discourage you from reading Magpie—on the contrary, I believe you absolutely should. It’s a fun book. However, the splatter western series offers a treasure trove of western goodness that merits exploration beyond just Magpie.

Now, there are thousands of reviews far better than I could write about Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, so if you want to know more about the book itself, I recommend seeking those out. I’ll summarize it briefly: it’s about a runaway in the West called the Kid who joins the Glanton Gang as they venture into Mexico to collect Apache scalps for a bounty. They descend into a killing spree of epic proportions, slaughtering the innocent alongside the guilty, destroying everything they touch. The writing is poetic. You can miss a phrase and find yourself lost for pages, requiring you to double back, much like getting lost in the woods. It’s so dense that I often “discover” scenes I swear I’ve never read, even though I’ve read every word six times. Though it isn’t long, I’ve never been able to hold the entire story in my mind all at once. Like I’ve said, I’ve read it six times, but I wouldn’t call it a favorite. It’s the quintessential example of western noir. McCarthy’s view of humanity as apex predator, as monster, is utterly devoid of hope. It was entertaining the first time I read it in the ’90s—like the Bible told from the Devil’s perspective—but now it just feels like trauma. I read it last week while waiting out Hurricane Helene, and I don’t know anymore. It feels like an assault. It reminds me of Henry Miller’s words in the opening of Tropic of Cancer: “This is a libel, slander, defamation of character, a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of art, a kick in the pants to God, man, destiny, time, love, beauty…” I’m not even sure I can call it McCarthy’s best book, as it feels his least human and completely devoid of optimism or anything like optimism. However, it may very well be the best artistic rendering of the West, though it is, in fact, not a western at all, despite my earlier classification. There’s more to it than that; the book confounds definition. But for me—this time—the takeaway is this: to hell with Cormac McCarthy and his grief at being born human, or a massive restatement of the idea that hope thrives despite history’s glaring evidence to the contrary.

Check out The Magpie Coffin here at Amazon Check out The Blood Meridian here at Amazon

 

Booked (and Printed): September 2024

 

I love September. The beginning of autumn, the cooling temps, and the first rush of green leaves turning gold, copper, and crimson. A marvelous month that is second only to October in my book of favorite things. Speaking of books (which is why we’re here, right?), my September reading life ended up embarrassingly small—three books and five short stories—due, mostly, to a late month skirmish with Covid that wiped out my pleasure reading for more than a week. Quitting two novels halfway through didn’t help either, but we’ll get to those later. The month started strong with David Housewright’s tenth Rushmore McKenzie mystery, THE LAST KIND WORD (2013). I’ve said before how much I enjoy McKenzie’s adventures and The Last Kind Word is one of the best in the series so far. McKenzie reluctantly goes undercover as a professional thief in Northern Minnesota when an AK-47 that went missing during the ATF’s botched Operation Fast and Furious—a real-life ATF sting operation gone sour on the U.S.-Mexico border—shows up in an amateurish robbery in rural Minnesota.   The bungling robbers turn out to be a down-on-their-luck family. McKenzie worms his way into their circle and, while he is trying to get a line on where they purchased the AK-47, he plans a complicated heist for them. Things get sticky when McKenzie begins sympathizing with the hard luck criminals and a local gangster and a couple crooked cops arrive on the scene. The Last Kind Word has a Richard Stark vibe, great characterization, and a sizzling plot. HEMINGWAY’S NOTEBOOK, by Bill Granger (1986), is the seventh (of fourteen) November Man thrillers; it’s my favorite of the four series’ titles I’ve read, too. After faking his death years earlier, November is called back from retirement when an acquaintance from the intelligence community threatens to tell the KGB he’s still breathing—an organization that would love to change November’s status to cold and dead. So November agrees to help with a niggling little revolution on the tiny Caribbean Island of St. Michel. Of course, nothing is as it seems and November is hard-pressed to peel away the layers of deceit and stay alive at the same time. And it’s done with Granger’s usual irony and distrust of secrecy and authority. The annual short story anthology, THE BEST MYSTERY AND SUSPENSE STORIES OF THE YEAR—2024, edited by Otto Penzler and Anthony Horowitz, is something I look forward to every year. This entry is good, but below the standards I’ve come to expect since a few of the stories made me wonder why they had been selected for its august pages. The good, and even a few great tales, made me forget the mediocre stuff without incident. I’m planning a detailed review of this one later in October and so I’ll leave it at that.

While my book length reading was pathetic, the number of individual short stories I read, five all together, was pretty okay. And every one of those tales were varying shades of good. C. J. Box’s “ONE-CAR BRIDGE,” which features Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett, is about a greedy and flat-out mean landowner that may, or maybe won’t, get his just desserts. It was part of Box’s collection, Shots Fired (2015). “THE TWO-PERCENT SOLUTION,” by Jack Ritchie, is a silly and dishonest (read that as impossible for the reader to solve) puzzler featuring Harry Turnbuckle unmasking an arsonist and murderer. Ritchie hit every bad note he could, but somehow its conclusion still elicited a smile. It appeared in the June 1984 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Al Sarrantonio’s clever horror story, “LAST”—which was published in the anthology Shivers VI (2010)—is a hardboiled and stylish play on humanity’s longstanding fear of technology. And it, unlike Ritchie’s tale, hit every note with a maestro’s touch. “DOOM OF THE DARK DELTA,” by James Reasoner (2024), is good pulpy fun. When sailor and soldier Jorras Trevayle is washed ashore after a shipwreck, he finds an evil sorcerer, a battery of wicked soldiers, a naked woman running for her life, and a species of freakishly large snakes. And all of them are an obstacle to Trevayle’s survival. Reading “Doom of the Dark Delta”—which is the first novella in Reasoner’s new Snakehaven series—is like cracking the pages of an old Weird Tales. But its zesty spirit, cracker-jack plotting, and splendid adventure are all James Reasoner. Finally, Alan Orloff’s gritty and hardboiled flash story, “ONCE” (2024), is an irony-laced crime story with a surprise begin enough for a much longer tale. You can read “Once” here at Shotgun Honey. Now, for those two books mentioned earlier where the pages quit turning before the story did. Between you and me, both DNFs (did not finish) were likely caused by me and Covid more than to any deficiencies in the books themselves. Although read ahead and I’ll mention a few anyway. Sam Llewellyn’s RIPTIDE (1992). Llewellyn is a favorite suspense writer of mine and I’ve always enjoyed his novels set around the ocean and yachting. I’ve tried reading Riptide before and failed, so maybe it’s less Covid than…something else. The narrative is flabby and uneven, which is unusual for Llewellyn, and damned if I could get into it. Again. Maybe I’ll wait another ten years and read it with different results. The other was Phillip Thompson’s first Colt Harper novel, OUTSIDE THE LAW (2017). The hardboiled style, sweltering rural Mississippi backdrop, and gritty plot are right up my ally, but the narrative never spoke to me and seemed a little flat, for no reason I can point to, which makes me think my perception of Outside the Law was influenced more by a foggy head and a cough than any real problems with the story. Maybe I’ll try it again with fresher eyes. Fin— Now on to next month…

Review: "Brothers" by Ed Gorman & Richard Chizmar

“Brothers” By Ed Gorman & Richard Chizmar Short, Scary Tales, 2015   “Brothers”—which is a novelette-length expansion of Ed Gorman’s 2006 short story—is a dark tale about brotherhood and loss. Brothers Chet and Michael’s mother died when they were teenagers and their father, a cop and a drunk, was emotionally absent from their lives. Chet, the oldest of the two, essentially raised Michael and as an adult, Chet can’t let go of his perceived responsibility: he has always been there to rescue Michael from his darker self. Chet was there to help Michael escape gambling and alcohol addictions. He facilitated Michael’s hiring as a Chicago cop, and even found him a wholesome wife. So when Michael starts backsliding into his old ways, Chet steps in once again to save his younger brother. “Brothers” is an example of what Ed Gorman did so well: dark, melancholy tales inhabited by characters as real as our own neighbors, friends, siblings, and spouses with a subtle pre-destination that—no matter how hard the characters struggle and plan—will lead them to ruin. But Ed never wrote pure noir and “Brothers” is no exception. He counterbalanced the bleak themes with low-key humor and made his flawed regular-man characters worthwhile by endowing them with a realistic complexity and contradiction. As I noted above, “Brothers” is an expansion of an earlier story, which was published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. I’ve read both the original and the expanded versions   and Richard Chizmar, who I believe was responsible for the expansion, added a significant amount of narrative, including an interesting childhood event that gives the reader a better understanding of Michael. While the original short story is excellent and worth reading, this collaboration is even better. If you can find “Brothers” anywhere, do yourself a favor and read it.

Go here for the out-of-print paperback edition of “Brothers” at Amazon.

 

From Ed Gorman's Desk: "John Brunner"

 

from ED GORMAN’S Desk

John Brunner from Dec. 16, 2006   One of the real pleasures of my teenage years was reading the space operas of John Brunner, which mostly appeared in Ace Double Book form, sometimes taking up both sides. Except for Leigh Brackett and some of Edmond Hamilton, I couldn’t handle most space opera after I reached about age fifteen. But Brunner was both a superb writer of swift colorful action stories and a true citizen of the world, this last lending his tales a real sense of history which he projected into the future. His characters were never standard pulp issue, either. They usually had problems unrelated to the plot some of which, realistically, were never resolved even as the curtain fell. He also had a somewhat baroque sense of humor. I recall one of his Ace novels opening with a parody of a very sophisticated party. I appreciated it even more when I saw the same thing a few years later in the then-shocking movie “Darling.” Brunner had tucked his swipe at pre-Euro-trash into space opera. He got an early start on his action tales, selling his first novel at 17 as by Gil Hunt. This was all in the Sixties. Came the Seventies and Brunner received the Hugo award, the British Science Fiction award and the French Prix Apollo. You don’t get those babies writing space opera. From the Daily Telegraph, UK: “The Squares of the City (1965) was a study in mathematical psychology in which two ruthless politicians manipulate people in a real-life chess match. Brunner’s more pessimistic stories included The Sheep Look Up (1972), a depressing look forward to the horrors of pollution; and The Shockwave Rider (1975), in which computers spread viruses and other evils. In this he was to prove wrong those experts who at the time dismissed the possibility of electronic viruses.” These are his acknowledged masterpieces. There were few science fiction writers as popular or influential as Brunner during the Seventies, especially after the appearance of The Shockwave Rider. He’d gone rather quickly from competent paperback man to bestselling genre master with a worldwide following. What happened next has never been clear to me. Though I’ve heard various explanations, the one given most often is that he put several years research and writing into a historical novel called The Great Steamboat Race and that it flopped badly, shaking the confidence of author and publisher alike. Something sure happened because when you look at the books he wrote in the Eighties, you see a writer essentially reverting to the work of his early days. Not outright space opera but definitely work far less ambitious than the novels that brought him awards and acclaim. His health got bad. His wife died. I’m told that at one convention he announced from the dais that he needed work and to please put him on their list. Any writer who pitches himself like that may get a contract but he sure isn’t going to get much money. He died at a convention, too. Heart attack. As much as some readers admire The Traveler in Black, I think the better seldom-mentioned Brunner book is The Whole Man. Brunner creates not only a bleak future society unlike any I’ve ever encountered in sf but he also gives us a mutant-freak as a protagonist, a bitter, angry confused man who defies all the conventions of the form. A number of writers tried something like this previously—notably A.E. Van Vogt with Slan—but nobody brought the passion or dystopic poetry Brunner did to the theme.     Six months or so before his death I wrote a long retro review of The Whole Man for a sf magazine and sent a copy to Bluejay editor Jim Frenkel who was then republishing a few Brunner titles. He sent it on to Brunner and told me that Brunner was greatly pleased with it. I’m glad he got to see it. He deserved a lot more praise than my little review could give him. Click here to check out John Brunner’s books on Amazon.

This article originally appeared on Ed Gorman’s blog, New Improved Gorman, on Dec. 16, 2006. It is reprinted here by permission. Ed wrote dozens of novels in a variety of genres, but his most popular work (and my favorite of his work) was in the crime and western genres. His ten Sam McCain mysteries—set in the fictional Iowa town of Black River Falls during the 1950s, ’60, and ’70s—are suspenseful, mysterious, and often funny excursions into small town America. The New York Times called Sam McCain, “The kind of hero any small town could take to its heart” and The Seattle Times called McCain “an intriguing mix of knight errant and realist…”      But Ed was also a tireless reader and promoter of other writers’ work. His blogs—there were three, none of them operating at the same time—are treasure troves for readers of crime, horror, and western fiction both old and new. Ed died Oct. 14, 2016.   Click here to check out Ed Gorman’s Sam McCain novels on Amazon.

An Introduction to Katherine MacLean

The Fittest & Other Stories by Katherine MacLean A 3 Play Book, 2024     Introduction     The critic and author, Damon Knight wrote, “As a science fiction writer she [Katherine MacLean] has few peers; her work is not only technically brilliant but has a rare human warmth and richness.” An apt insight since Katherine MacLean’s speculative fiction had the grounding of hard science fiction—technically and scientifically accurate depictions of physics, mathematics, and engineering—mingled with the so-called “soft” sciences of culture and sociology. She specialized in exploring how the one impacted the other in near future worlds. As she explained in her essay, “The Expanding Mind”: “I write about the near future because I want an excuse to read science and economics and try to find out what is going to happen next. I don’t want to be in the surprised rocking chair set, trembling before an alien world.” MacLean excelled at this near future speculation. One example of her futuristic insight came in the story, “Syndrome Johnny” (Galaxy, July 1951, as by Charles Dye) where she predicted the potential use of DNA, which was still an emerging scientific idea at the time, as a tool to genetically improve humans. Her speculative writings, future technologies and all, were wrapped in a literate, unblemished style rare for the genre in the middle years of the Twentieth Century as the opening passage from “The Fittest” (Worlds Beyond, Jan. 1951) shows:   “Among the effects of Terry Shay was found a faded snapshot. It is a scene of desolation, a wasteland of sand and rock made vague by blowing dust, and to one side huddle some dim figures. “They might be Eskimos with their hoods pulled close, or they might be small brown bears. “It is the only record left of the great event, the event which came into the hands of Terry Shay. “Like all great events it started with trivial things.” MacLean’s work has been a regular in anthologies over the decades. Isaac Asimov selected “Defense Mechanism” (Astounding, Oct. 1949), “Pictures Don’t Lie” (Galaxy, Aug. 1951), “The Snowball Effect” (Galaxy, Sep. 1952), and “Unhuman Sacrifice” (Astounding Science Fiction, Nov. 1958) for inclusion in his The Great SF Stories series of anthologies. Her 1971 novella, “The Missing Man,” (Analog, Mar. 1971) won a Nebula Award and was later expanded into a novel of the same name. In a phrase, Katherine MacLean was a highly respected writer of science fiction with an interest in how humanity would cope with the future. Katherine MacLean was born on January 22, 1925 in Montclair, New Jersey, to Gordon—a chemical engineer—and Ruth MacLean (née Crawford). She received a B.A. in economics, and an M.S. in psychology. She worked various jobs, including as an English professor, a biochemist, an EKG technician, as an attendant in a vitamin store. She was married three times, and had one son. She died September 1, 2019.     The four tales included in The Fittest & Other Stories are a sampling of MacLean’s best work. “The Fittest” is a marvelous telling of first contact, moral dilemmas, and the violent nature of humanity. “Where or When?” is a love story that will ring true for anyone that has ever loved. “Carnivore” is a disturbing view of humanity’s sectarian and violent nature without, unfortunately, much redemption. “Contagion”—which is one of MacLean’s most popular tales—is about colonization, fear, and loss of self. Cover designed by Karadraws.com

Click here to purchase the paperback or here to purchase the Kindle edition at Amazon.

 

Praise for "Casinos, Motels, Gators"

 

I’ve been holding onto this bit of news for so long, three months and a day for anyone counting, that it feels (almost) sacrilegious to post about it now. But I’ve never been one to let a little discomfort keep me from annoying my three loyal readers. So…I’m sharing this wonderful review novelist and blogger James Reasoner wrote for my collection, Casinos, Motels, Gators, all the way back on June 5. He liked it, and from his kind words I’m comfortable saying, he really liked it. Here’s a sampling of some of my favorite parts of James’s review: “I really like Ben Boulden’s writing. His prose is as terse and tough and hardboiled as any you’ll find these days.” “I’d previously referred to “121” as a Manhunt story for the 21st Century. Having reread it and read the other two Jimmy Ford stories, I’d say that not only would the series have worked in Manhunt, it would have been right at home in the late Seventies/early Eighties issues of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. With some adjustment to the trappings, they could have even been Black Mask stories in the early Thirties. Boulden’s writing has definite echoes of Paul Cain, Raoul Whitfield, and Frederick Nebel.” “Casinos, Motels, Gators is one of the best books I’ve read this year.” You can read James Reasoner’s entire review here. When you’re done reading the review, do yourself (and me) a favor and read Casinos, Motels, Gators.

Casinos, Motels, Gators is available in Kindle, including Kindle Unlimited, here and as a trade paperback here.

Booked (and Printed): August 2024

 

Booked (and Printed) August 2024 While August’s temps were too hot, the days were noticeably shorter than those at summer’s height and a few even showed the promise of autumn. Heck, here and there leaves are shimmering red and gold. My reading volume was normal for August, but my eyes were sore all month and so much of my reading happened on Kindle to allow me to adjust the font size to “super old guy with angry peepers.” I read five books—two story collections, two novels, and a single nonfiction true crime—along with two individual short stories. You’ll notice, however, I’m only going to talk about one of those shorts because I don’t remember a thing about the other, besides the author’s name, and the magazine where I read it: a late-1980s Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (EQMM). Well, that issue went missing in what I think of as “The Case of the Missing EQMM” and it’s a true mystery because I’ve been looking for it for three weeks. Now, I’m wondering if a rascally poltergeist is playing tricks. But alas…onto that solitary story I wrote in my ledger and remember well. “THE SPY CAME D.O.A.,” by W. L. Fieldhouse, is a solid whodunit featuring Army CID investigator, Major Clifford Lansing, printed in the Feb. 1979 issue of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. When Lansing is called into investigate the murder of a colleague working undercover on a narcotics investigation in Nuremburg, Germany, he discovers a long line of criminality and treachery. Fieldhouse does an excellent job of shuffling suspects across the page and mixing action scenes into the narrative to keep things interesting. I guessed the culprit earlier than I should have, but that didn’t bother me a whit.

As for the books. Four of them are new—published in 2024—and the fifth is an old favorite. TIEBRAKER, by Jack M. Bickham (1989), is my version of comfort reading. It’s Bickham’s first mystery featuring aging professional tennis player and part-time spy, Brad Smith. In this one, Smith is sent to Yugoslavia to cover a new tournament, the Belgrade Open, for a tennis magazine. But his real assignment is to help the young tennis phenom, Danisa Lechova, defect to the United States. Tiebraker is a wild ride with a marvelous Cold War-era Eastern Bloc setting, a bunch of action, romance, and a brilliant dosing of tennis. I’ve read it five times (maybe more) and I’m sure I’ll read it again. You can read an old review I wrote for Tiebreaker here. Steve Hamilton’s AN HONORABLE ASSASSIN (2024), is a thriller that reads so fast it is easy to ignore the implausibility of the plot. It is Hamilton’s first solo job since 2018 and his first Nick Mason novel—there are three so far—since 2017. It should appeal to anyone who likes an adrenalin-rich and low-calorie thriller. Check out my full review of An Honorable Assassin here. LONG HAUL: HUNTING THE HIGHWAY SERIAL KILLERS, by Frank Figliuzzi (2024), is a scary but fascinating look at serial killers working America’s highways. It is centered around the FBI’s Highway Serial Killings initiative, which identifies and tracks these murders. After reading it, I’ll never look at truck stops with same innocence as I once did. My full review of Long Haul is here. Lee Child’s SAFE ENOUGH AND OTHER STORIES (2024), is a collection of 20 standalone tales without Jack Reacher anywhere in sight. The stories are thoughtful, exciting, mysterious, and…good! Check out my review of Safe Enough here. The final collection (and book) of the month, HERETIC 2: MORE STORIES, by Philip José Farmer (2024), is a cool collection of three of Farmer’s early stories—one novella and two shorts—from the 1950s. They, like pretty much everything Farmer wrote, question authority and religion in an entertaining and thought-provoking manner. I’ll have more to say about this one in the next few weeks. Last, and I suppose least, is Robert Littell’s A NASTY PIECE OF WORK (2013), because I gave up the fight a little more than halfway to the finish. I’ve enjoyed Littell’s spy fiction, including his extraordinary novel about the CIA, The Company (2002), but what appealed to me most about A Nasty Piece of Work—its P.I. status and New Mexico setting—wasn’t enough to overcome the longwinded narrative, including pages-long descriptions of women’s ankles and feet. I couldn’t pin down when the novel took place, either. It felt like it was written in the late-1980s—no cell phones, descriptions of an Afghanistan that seemed more Soviet Union-era than post-9/11—and then half-heartedly updated to give it a 21st Century feel. It didn’t work. On any level. Fin— Now on to next month…

"You Think You Know Westerns—A Double Western Review" by Mike Baker

 

You Think You Know Westerns— A Double Western Review by Mike Baker    Stay Away, Joe by Dan Cushman Popular Library, 1953   In Stay Away, Joe (1953) by Dan Cushman, Louis Champlain and his family live on a Cree reservation in Montana just after the Korean War. Louis has been given 19 heifers and one bull by the Federal government to help him and his family out of poverty. News travels fast on the Rez about Louis’ newfound wealth and a big whoop up, a large unruly three-day beer party, spontaneously commences with Louis and all his friends and relations. Louis wakes up hungover on the third day to discover they drunkenly slaughtered and ate his only bull. His son Big Joe, bronc riding WWII and Korean War vet, comes back from the rodeo riding circuit and offers to help his dad get a new bull which everyone tells Louis is a bad idea, as Joe is a drunken, philandering, petty criminal, but Louis loves his boy, and things go horribly and ridiculously wrong from there. Stay Away, Joe sequentially tells a series of stories about how Louis goes from having nothing to being “rich” to having nothing again. Each step along the way either Louis or his family, driven either by the “old ways” are too generous or by trying to be like how they imagine “white folks” would act derail the Federal program of which they are currently a part. The book’s opening, and if you’ve read my reviews you know how much a I love a strong opening, is charming and hilariously funny. I can’t say more than that. You need to read it. Beyond that, the book meanders. It reminds me of Max Evans’ Rounders which seemingly goes nowhere except it does. It has what I call a “ta da” moment that cinches together all the threads into something tangible you can take away. Stay Away, Joe doesn’t do that. The book hangs. Cushman’s characters are fulsome and meticulously drawn deeply flawed human beings. They are not Indian stereotypes but, because Cushman was a white guy, you might make that claim. He doesn’t seem to me to be judging them but rather his critique might be what happens when you impose values on someone who isn’t native to those values or worse, you see someone else’s values as superior to your own and you acquiesce.   Cruel Angel Past Sundown by Hailey Piper Death Head’s Press, 2023        Meanwhile, Cruel Angel Past Sundown (2023) by Hailey Piper is about ranch wife Annette Klein the day she’s visited by a naked pregnant woman dragging a cavalry saber out of the desert. Annette and her husband Frank bring the woman inside where upon the woman straddles Annette’s husband in bed and eviscerates him with the saber as Annette, in a weird bloody eyed stupor, watches unable to stop the deranged pregnant woman as the woman eats her husband’s viscera. Later that night, Annette stabbed by the pregnant woman’s father who shows up looking for his daughter who he believes is the reborn virgin Mary carrying the Christ child. Annette gets away on her bull Big Pete who takes her into the town of Low’s Bend where she and her friends fight off father and daughter who have come to Low’s Bend, for different reasons, to pretty much murder everyone there. The book evolves rapidly though from a straight-ahead splatter western with a goth twist, something like a weird western but with a horror bent, into something more metaphysical which I did not see coming, wasn’t prepared for and struggled against until the end of the book. Piper writes in a mix of the mundane and the poetical and sometimes suffers for this because, imho, her voice feels uneven. It would be hard to write a book that was solidly poetical so that you have to find a balance drawing out certain lines. It reads here like two separate narratives, almost. There’s a particular moment, somewhere in the middle, where the main character gets bogged down arguing with a supernatural villain. It would be comical if it wasn’t meant to be deadly serious. It’s where the book is heading. Like I said, somewhere metaphysical. Also, the book deals with LGBTQ+ issues which I imagine might turn some readers off, you know who you are, even you guys should read this. I would, like Marcellus Wallace suggested, fight through that shit because it pays off. You might not like it but a few days later, as what I experienced sunk in, I got that I’d read something maybe important and, at the very least, interesting enough to be worth my time. You might ask yourself why I’m reviewing these two vastly dissimilar books simultaneously. It works like this: I started both books believing they were westerns and, it turns out, they are westerns in the same way Star Wars is a movie about trash compactors and intergalactic cabarets. They both have cowboys and Indians and horses and stuff but neither fits the bill for what most anyone would call a western. This is not a bad thing. The genre, which I love dearly, needs to be stretched and changed if it is to survive. My generation, as well as the generation before mine, won’t keep it alive. I believe that traditional westerns will only live on if first younger readers see a way into the stories and books and writers like Hailey Piper will bring in those readers. I wonder if Dan Cushman’s book had a similar effect in 1953 when it came out. I would like to imagine that it was the gateway drug from cultural elitists who read it, felt intellectually vindicated and then, while buying smokes at the corner store, saw a Louis L ’Amour book and thought, why not.

Stay Away, Joe, was adapted into a wonky and unfaithful film starring Elvis Pressley and Burgess Meredith in 1968. *             *             * Click here to purchase Cruel Angel Past Sundown for Kindle or here for the paperback edition at Amazon