Forgotten Books: The Pulp Jungle by Frank Gruber

When I read Frank Gruber’s retelling of his days as a struggling then successful pulp fiction writer from the 1930s, I realized something important: I don’t have it so bad here in 2017.

Frank Gruber was one of the more well-known and prolific authors to emerge from the pulp fiction years from the 1920s through World War II. By his own estimates, Gruber wrote more than 300 pulp fiction yarns, 60 novels, and more than 200 screenplays and television scripts. THE PULP JUNGLE is his retelling of his time as a writer, how he started, how he persevered, the decisions he made, and how it all turned out.

In a word, it is a sobering read.

Like many of the successful pulp writers in the depth of the Great Depression, Gruber wrote everything. A ledger from the months August 1932 to June 1934 indicated he wrote 174 “pieces” which totaled 620,000 words, all on a Remington manual typewriter. He called himself a sloppy writer, so he had to retype everything after he corrected the manuscript. The fiction spanned the gamut: Sunday School stories, detective stories, love stories, spicy stories, sports stories, etc. Those words were not solely fiction. He wrote tons of articles often on topics he had to learn on the fly. In the book, Gruber lists the dollar amounts he earned for various pieces. Even in 1932 dollars, those meager sales didn’t add up to a living wage.

But he persevered. His move to New York in 1934 proved to be the kind of starving artist story that sounds good when you’ve made it but horrible at the time. He arrived in the Big Apple with the Remington, clothes that fit into a suitcase, and $40 after paying rent. And “I had something else…the will to succeed.” But those early New York years were bad. He “existed. Some days I had a single meal, some days I tasted no food at all other than the tomato soup at the Automat.” The tomato soup in question is actually warm water (which was free), catsup (also free), and crackers (free). That was the “soup.”

Gruber got two breaks that helped him on his way. One came from honesty. He had been paid twice for a single story and, reluctantly, Gruber had sent the second check back. That ended up paying dividends when the editor of Writer’s Digest came calling to see the man who had returned that check. The editor paid Gruber to be a contact in New York.

The other break—The Big Break—came in 1934 in one of those great true tales you hear. Gruber gets a call on Friday afternoon. Operator #5 was going to press the next day but was a story short. Could Gruber write a 5500-word story overnight? In his retelling, he started at 8pm and had a character. Two hours later, he had his leading lady. By 3:30am, he had his big finale…but still needed a plot thread to weave it all together. He got it, and delivered the 18 pages by 9am. He didn’t hear back for a few days. He started to worry, so he called on the editor. Oh, he was told, we pay on Friday. Pay? Yup, the story was purchased. And then he was asked for another. According to Gruber, “I was ‘in.’”

From that moment on, Gruber worked steadily and for higher paying markets. He cracked the big dog on the block—Black Mask—and kept going. The key factor here was that Gruber never stopped working. Yes he had made it, but in those days, a writer was only as good as the next sale. Not like today. So he kept working on stories, then branched out into novels, both detective stories as well as westerns. All the contacts he had made during the lean years paid dividends later on, including when he moved to Hollywood.

THE PULP JUNGLE is chock full of great little nuggets of truth. Writing to market is a growing aspect of indie writers, but Gruber and his pals did it back in the 1930s. They had to or they didn’t eat. Another modern trend is books or courses or classes on writing. Yes they serve a valuable purpose—I greatly benefited from two online courses with Dean Wesley Smith late in 2016—but constant writing means a writer is constantly improving his craft. By definition, each story or book is better than the previous. I can attest to that as well.

For any person who dreams of a full-time writing career in 2017, that dream is still attainable. But what the story of Frank Gruber’s professional life suggests is that hard work, determination, and perseverance will enable a writer to hone the skills necessary to become a full-time writer. It also demonstrates that writers must recognize and seize opportunities when they present themselves. Don’t think you could write a story overnight (or insert your own personal challenge here)? Perhaps Gruber didn’t think he could do it either…until he said “yes” and then he delivered.

You can, too.

Reading THE PULP JUNGLE is a great snapshot into the life of a real pulp fiction writer and might be essential reading for any writer who is considering the professional writing life.

Bloodline Season 3

Bloodline: Season 3

I crossed the finish line with Bloodline Season 3 last night. Perhaps that phrase will serve as a clue to what I thought of it.

This review contains spoilers so read no further if you don't want to know details.





Back in December, I watched Season 1 and raved about the series, especially Ben Mendelsohn's character, Danny. He was mesmerizing. He didn't survive to Season 2, having been murdered by his brother, John, played wonderfully by Kyle Chandler. Most of Season 2 was John and his two siblings (Kevin and Meg) and the constellation of characters around them try to come to terms with Danny's death and John trying to keep the law away. The finale of Season 2 also featured a murder and much of Season 3 was...wait for it...John trying to keep the law away from discovering *that* truth.

I'll be honest: there were certain stretches of Season 3 that were a slog. Well, not a slog, but just dull. I don't binge watch, so my wife and I watch an episode a night. Seven of the ten episodes in Season 3 typically ended with "Well, Kevin's being stupid, John's always looking like he's trying to contain his anger, lots of people are trying to talk to each other and leave voicemails like 'John, it's Kevin. I really need to talk to you.", and not much else." Oh, and a lot--a lot--of F bombs. It got to the point where I could tell, by the slightest of pauses from the actors, that they were about to unleash that word.

But the last three episodes made up for the previous seven. Well, Episode 8 was more of the same, but the last image served as a cliffhanger. So the wife and I binged the last two back-to-back. Hallelujah! Mendelsohn was back. Sure, he was still dead, but his 'ghost' kept up a running conversation with John. All that gravitas from Mendelsohn was on full display, and frankly, Chandler did some of his best acting opposite Mendelsohn. Episode 9 was a wonderfully trippy, what's-going-on hour of television that I enjoyed specifically because I didn't know what was going to happen. Might be the best of Season 3. The Finale was good, wrapped up some loose ends, but, ultimately was a little underwhelming considering how fun Episode 9 was. And the last moment, the final bit of this series, left you with an unanswered question. Sure, it leaves the true ending up to the viewer, but come on. We all want things tied up in a bow.

Acting-wise, Mendelsohn really shined in all of his parts, but Kyle Chandler I really enjoyed, too, even when he's often doing the same thing. This is my first time seeing him, and I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for his projects from now on. It was fantastic to see Sissy Spacek again, and her role and performance only gets better as the series moves on. Heck, her final scene is pretty darn brutal.

Overall, Bloodline was an enjoyable show, despite some dull parts. I could actually make a case where new viewers simply watch Season 1 and go no further. That season ended on such a high that it, frankly, never achieved again. But no one is really going to do that because of the questions posed at the end of Season 1.

Bloodline. It's certainly a recommended show despite its flaws, and I'm glad I watched it.

Wonder Woman (Movie Review)

Every Saturday night, MeTV broadcasts an episode from the 1970s TV show “Wonder Woman.” That theme song always makes me smile, as does Lynda Carter’s portrayal of the Amazon from Paradise Island. The show was cheesy, especially when they moved to the 1970s (from the 1940s of Season 1), but I always appreciated her earnestness, even if I didn’t know what that was back in the day. Ditto for Batman ’66 and Superman ’78. Somewhere along the line, earnestness in a superhero film was beaten down in favor of grim and dark and dour because…whatever. That’s more real. There are certainly elements of grimdark in Wonder Woman (WW) but it’s so refreshing to see a return of earnestness to a superhero film, especially this one.

The movie is the origin of Diana of Themyscira, the island (don’t call it Paradise Island), the only child of the Amazons set on earth and hidden by Zeus to serve as the ultimate protector against the fallen god of war, Ares. Naturally, the world of man intrudes on Themyscira when an American spy, Steve Trevor played by Chris Pine, crashes in the water. Diana sees this and, being the hero, saves him. Then you get the first bad-ass sequence in the movie: when the Germans invade Themyscira and the Amazons defend their island. Holy cow! The action was well choreographed and executed with panache. That the Amazons were all female warriors (natch) was great to watch. More importantly, to me, was that they were almost all not young. Robin Wright and Connie Nielsen, to name the two main stars of Themyscira are both 51 now, so they were 49 or 50 when filming the movie.

The plot is a natural super-hero plot: future hero wants to do something good, leaves her home to do the good thing. The fish-out-of-water aspect here is great with some genuine laugh-out-loud moments. In Superman ’78, when Superman made his debut, he had grown up a human and revealed himself to the world. In WW, the Amazonian is introduced to the world of man with predictably funny moments. You’ve seen some of them in the trailers. There are more and funnier ones in the film.

Diana’s single-minded belief that Ares was behind the war and that if she merely killed him, the war would end is her guiding force. “Just get me to the war,” she keeps imploring Steve, “and I’ll kill Ares and be done with it.” But her seeing all the pain and horror of a human war—especially World War I—starts to affect her. This leads to arguably the greatest moment in the film (and it’s in the trailer so it’s not a spoiler): her march across No Man’s Land. She’s tired of hearing the world ‘no’ so she decides she’ll do something, anything, to try and help. What follows is such a transcendent moment in the movie my eyes welled with tears.

Gal Gadot is truly amazing in this role. Her nuances, whether in the quiet scenes or her determination in the action sequences, really bring WW above a mere hero in a hero film. She gives the character depth to do what she has to do in the way she does it. Chris Pine has charm dripping out of his pores. Director Patty Jenkins could have cast any hunky star to stand opposite Gadot. With Pine, you get something extra. Not only is he the stand-in for the audience (his responses to Diana’s heritage is pretty much how we’d all react), his charm helps the comedy play out better. His particular way of reading Steve’s lines ended up being something more than Hunky Co-Star. And even he has a character arc.

The film is not without some flaws. Act three is a little tedious and devolves into a typical super-hero showdown. At night of course, which brought to mind Batman v Superman, a movie I’ve tried my best to erase from my memory (save for the WW parts). The tedium of another night fight was in sharp contrast to the Themyscira battle, which was in full daylight on a beach. More of that, please.

But the quibbles are minor because the entire experience was so filled with joy. I loved watching this movie, late afternoon of opening day. It’s the way I want every DC film to be: action, adventure, a good dose of humor and spectacle, with heart and emotion.

Need any more reason to see the movie? When was the last time you heard an audience erupt in applause at the end of a movie? My theater audience did that. I enthusiastically joined in. It’s that kind of movie.

You Can Find Great Story Structure Anywhere: Scooby Doo, Mystery Inc

One of my favorite modern cartoons was Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated. The show, which ran for two sporadic seasons, came at the perfect time for my boy, who had just discovered the original series and enjoyed it. But Mystery Inc. was something different. Not only did it issue meta commentary on the original series, it offered an excellent example of ongoing storytelling amid ‘monster of the week’ episodes.

I re-watched the first episode this morning—what else are you supposed to do on Saturday mornings other than watch cartoons? Thanks Netflix. The more I watched the breakdown of the episode, the more I realized how the scenes were actually structured. Yeah, it’s the curse of a writer always to be mindful of how stories are constructed.

Effortlessly, scenes relayed not only the backstory and current situation of our five heroes—Fred, Velma, Daphne, Shaggy, and Scooby—but also subplots and main plots. Sure, it’s a cartoon, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be built like a movie.

And this episode was. The precise moment I realized it was when Velma was about to tell Scooby about her relationship with Shaggy—still not one of my favorite aspects of the show, but I understand why—when the monster attacks the Mystery Machine. Thus, subplot averted for main plot. This subplot remerges one more time and then is tabled until the next episode. Ditto for the Daphne/Fred subplot.

The coolest thing is one of the clues. Daphne finds a key that is also a locket. Inside, there is a photo of a couple. She can’t figure out what it means to *this* episode until the end when the Bad Guy reveals he’s never seen it before.

But Fred’s dad, the mayor, has. The last scene is the gang at a local radio station and they get a call. A spooky voice says “You don’t know what you’ve uncovered: the truth of the curse of Crystal Cove.” When asked who the caller is, he identifies himself as Mister E. “And the real mystery is about to begin.” And the episode ends.

Boom! Now you’ve got an entire season’s worth of storytelling.

I really loved this show. Season 1 was pretty consistent in terms of airing, but Season 2 was sporatic. The casting was great. Patrick Warburton is the sheriff.  Each set of parents were an older reflection of the each gang member. Shaggy’s dad was voiced by Casey Kasum, the original Shaggy. The look, the feel, the vibe of the entire series is excellent. And the series finale is mindblowingly good.

Anyway, just thought I’d share some writerly thoughts about the first episode, “Beware the Beast from Below” of Scooby Doo and remind you that you can find inspiration about writing everywhere.

Forgotten Books: Return of the Rio Kid by Brett Halliday

In 2010, while vacationing in and around San Diego, I happened into a used book, as I am wont to do. I found a book called Death on Treasure Trail. It had a nice, bright yellow cover, the kind that nearly every western novel had back in the day. Erle Stanley Gardner even wrote an introduction. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the setting of the novel was in Texas’s Big Bend region.

Yet I never read the book. Cut to July 2016 and our trip out to Big Bend. I’m a fan of reading books on vacations that are set around the places I’m visiting so Death on Treasure Trail was tops on my list. But the book is pretty beat up, so I took to the internet to find an electronic copy for my Kindle. Imagine my surprise when I discovered not only Treasure Trail, but the other two Rio Kid books all available as ebooks. Well, seeing as how Treasure Trail was third of three, I went ahead and got Return of the Rio Kid, the first book in the trilogy.

The author on my physical book is listed as “Don Davis” but, in reality, the man behind the typewriter was none other than Brett Halliday, the writer who created the Michael Shayne private eye series. However, “Halliday” is merely the most famous pen name for the actual man, Davis Dresser, but that name won’t sell many ebooks, so the good folks at Open Road Media made sure Brett Halliday supersedes the title on the new covers.

When the book opens, the Rio Kid has been hiding out in Mexico after fleeing Arizona on a false murder charge three years before. Sure, the Rio Kid has killed men before, but the one that got his visage on a wanted poster was falsified. Having grown into manhood in a foreign land, the Kid wants to return to Arizona and clear his name. He chooses the Big Bend region as his crossing point, but not before trouble starts.

On the Mexican side of the border sits a small town under the thumb of ruthless hombre, Pedro. He rules the town in much the same way Gene Hackman’s character does in Unforgiven. Being a western paperback of the 1940s, the Kid gets himself in a fight when he refuses to remove his twin .45s strapped to each leg. He hightails it out of town, leaving one mess behind. He crosses the Rio Grande and finds himself in another mess, this one partly of his own making. You see, there’s a small town on the Texas side. A poker game is being played and a young man is betting when he should be folding. The Kid gets himself mixed up in the game and ends up winning the young man’s ranch. A ranch that, not coincidentally, is one of two parcels of land a ruthless (is there any other kind?) cattle rancher wants to own. Well, you can imagine what happens from here.

But you’d be partially wrong. Sure, the Kid—whose real name isn’t given—does what all flawed heroes with prices on their heads do: the right thing. Mostly. But the folks he’s trying to help and those he’s trying to stay away from, have other ideas. It makes for entertaining reading, that’s for sure. I especially liked the secret the Rio Kid uncovered and how he turned his attention to putting it to good use.

Halliday chose a curious method to get across how folks talked to each other. He spelled out the Rio Kid’s drawl phonetically. Granted, when I read the first few passages, I assumed Halliday was going to provide this kind of dialogue as an example and then revert back to standard spelling, letting the reader fill in the blanks. Nope. The Kid mutters through the entire book. Others, too. Here are a couple of examples.

“I’ll just keep my guns on, I reckon,” he drawled, “’less yo’re of uh mind tuh take’em offa me.”

And:

“Say, yo’re jes spoilin’ fer uh six-foot hole, ain’t yuh? Yuh cain’t buck Pedro, I’m tellin’ yuh.”

Yes, it leaves the reader with absolutely zero leeway in hearing the voice in the mind, but it’s a pain to type. I understand one or two words consistently spelled like they sound, but almost all of them? Aw, shucks. Who am I kiddin’? I liked ’em all.

Oh, and all that joy I experienced when I realized I was going to read a western set in Big Bend while actually being in Big Bend? That excitement held all the way until Halliday namedropped a mountain range that, upon consultation with the internet, was actually located in Arizona. No big deal. All I had to do was look out the window of my hotel and get my bearings straight.

But don’t let that dissuade you from reading this enjoyable first book in the Rio Kid Trilogy.

Ranking All James Bond Theme Songs

I'm a tad behind on listening to the nifty James Bonding podcast with Matt Mira and Matt Gourley. In the most-recent episode, #34 (dated Dec 2016), they spend 2.5 hours discussing all 24 James Bond theme songs.

Never one to let an opportunity to make a list pass me be--especially when it comes to James Bond--I made my own before listening to the episode. You can hear their list here and mine is here. The only caveat: I didn't include the Dr. No theme because it is the James Bond theme. I put it at zero.

Oh, and I'm happy to note that their #24 is the one that immediately, without a second thought, jumped to last. Abysmal song.

0. Dr. No (James Bond Theme)

1. Live and Let Die
2. Goldfinger
3. Thunderball
4. A View to a Kill
5. You Only Live Twice
6. The World is Not Enough
7. Diamonds are Forever
8. Nobody Does it Better (The Spy Who Loved Me)
9. The Living Daylights
10. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
11. The Man With the Golden Gun
12. From Russia With Love
13. Spyfall
14. You Don't Know My Name (Casino Royale)
15. For Your Eyes Only
16. Moonraker
17. Goldeneye
18. License to Kill
19. Tomorrow Never Dies*
20. All Time High (Octopussy)
21. Writing's On the Wall (Spectre)
22. Another Way to Die (Quantum of Solace)
23. Die Another Day

*The k.d. lang song, "Surrender," heard in the closing credits, is a brilliant song. Were it the official song, it's a Top 5 song (replacing Thunderball)

P.S., I never knew Shirley Bassey contributed a song for Quantum of Solace. They play a snippet (and then I went out and listened myself) and it's another swing and a miss.

Podcasts I Like: 70s Trek

They had me at the title: “70s Trek.” 

Heck, they had me at "70s"!

I listened to the first episode, then promptly downloaded all episodes up to that point (29 at the time). I binge-listened to all of them in a week’s time, loving every minute of each episode.

I was born during Star Trek’s third season so I grew up with Star Trek. Now, I’ll admit that my memory is a tad hazy and I only came to Trek after Star Wars debuted, but that’s where this podcast comes in.

Hosts Bob Turner and Kelly Casto are a delightful pair, easy on the ears, with a warm comradery and shared love of Trek in the 70s. In each episode that averages around 30 minutes, Bob and Kelly examine some aspect of Trek. While you don’t have to listen in order, it’s not a bad idea as you’ll get a good overview of how Trek came to be and the influences that went into its creation.

The main focus, however, is the 1970s, as the tagline reads, “The decade that built a franchise.” For us, over 50 years on, Trek permeates our daily lives, from cell phones to tablet computers to speaking to our computers. But Bob and Kelly take us back and remind us what it was like to be a fan of Trek in the 70s. Fans in the 70s didn’t know a lot. They had only a few books. They had a cartoon. Heck, they never even knew if there’d be any more live-action Trek. After all, Trek was actually a cancelled TV show, but it proved to be much more than that.

One of the aspects of this podcast that remains joyful is Bob and Kelly’s sense of wonder. Often one of them will take the lead on a particular subject, leaving the other co-host the first listener. Many times, new facts will be revealed, and cries of “I didn’t know that!” are great fun. What’s also fun is their clear joy at the subject and other things in Trek’s orbit.

So far (remember: I’m still catching up) a particular favorite episode is #3 (What We Knew in 1970), #13 (the Richard Arnold interview), and #9 (Star Trek in Syndication).

This is a love letter to Star Trek, the people behind it, the fans that kept it alive in the 1970s, and everything in between.
70s Trek has now firmly ensconced itself in my weekly podcast schedule. Utterly and completely enjoyable.

Oh, they have a Facebook presence and respond personally to comments. So after you subscribe to the podcast, head over there and join the conversation.

iTunes

Planet of the Apes (1968)

I watched Planet of the Apes (1968) last night. It was either the first time ever I've seen the film all the way through or the first time in decades. I have sepid-toned memories of me being a kid when those movies (1968, 1970-73) were being released. Truth be told, it's probably the TV series I remember.

With all the hoopla surrounding the 40th Anniversary of Star Wars, one podcast I listened to quoted a review from 1977's Time magazine which said that Star Wars was, paraphrasing here, a fun movie made like they used to make. Sitting in 2017, there are plenty of movies like that--SF ones, too; I'm looking at you Guardians of the Galaxy--but I wondered why the reviewer summed up Star Wars in that fashion.

In re-watching POTA, I think I realized it. As I am wont to do nowadays, I pull up Wikepedia and learn about said movie along the way. My wife commented how good a movie she thought POTA was in addition to star Charleton Heston's role in OMEGA MAN. The third of this little trilogy of SF films with Heston was Soylent Green. I've seen bits of SG and none of OM. But there's a definite pessimism in POTA. Understandable, considering the subject matter. I can see how Star Wars was such a breath of fresh air forty years ago this summer.

The prosthetic make-up in POTA holds up very well. Only a few times was the camera directly in line with the actor who was speaking, enabling the viewer to catch glimpses of the human actor's mouth. But, really, who cares?

I loved the set of the ape village. Seems to me there was a Mego playset. I had one of the Mego POTA dolls--the one in purple--to go along with my Mego super-hero dolls.

The movie is quite talky, with part of middle taken up with a court case. I appreciate that now. Perhaps there can be more of that in modern SF movies. I'm all for the action summer blockbuster movie, but it would be nice to sprinkle in some low-key SF every now and then.

Were all space movies of the late 60s and into the mid 70s set on desert planets? Seeing the three astronauts traipse around the American southwest made it look like western.

The scene where we first see the apes on horseback chasing the humans is a great scene. Viewers know going in there are apes, but the reveal is still powerful. And the music is really well done.

And that last shot. It is still very powerful and iconic. I know that the third film of the prequel POTA trilogy is coming out this summer. It simply has to end with the destruction of the Statue of Liberty, right?

At Houston's Comicpalooza a few weeks back, I purchased a VHS set of all 5 original POTA films for a grand total of $2.00. My intention is to watch all 5 this summer. One down; four to go.

What did y'all think of Planet of the Apes?

Western Words

I live and write in 2016, the 21st Century, and there isn’t any real way to know how folks talked in the Old West. The only way to discover what words people used in conversation is to read then-contemporary documents and glean what I can and put it in my stories.

There is, however, another way: western novels and stories. From the earliest days, authors sometimes had the opportunity to interview real old west cowboys. Or these future authors—I’m thinking of Edgar Rice Burroughs or Lester Dent—they actually grew up around some of these cowboys. No matter how the early 20th Century authors got their data, they put what they learned or knew into their stories.

Over the years and decades of western writing, a vocabulary of how writers described things emerged. A more or less common way to make these cowboy heroes, villains, and lovely ladies speak also emerged. Ever since the first western I read, I quickly realized that western writers simply had their own unique vocabulary.

So I started reading westerns with a pencil in hand.

Every time I came across some new term, I’d circle the word. Every new-to-me western I read-Right now, I'm reading THE FOURTH GUNMAN by Merle Constiner--I repeated this practice. It’s second nature to me now. Even when I read stories on my Kindle, I highlight words and phrases and collect them when I’m done.

Now, I have an ever-growing “database” of words I can use to sprinkle into my Triple Action Western  and Junction City Western stories and give them more authenticity and help the reader—and me—become immersed into the world of the Old West.

When All the Tweaks Are Done

In a bit of a sequel to my post over on DoSomeDamage on Saturday, I experienced something kinda funny yesterday.

In that post, I commented that I've been tinkering with this blog and the blog focusing on my mystery stories. I streamlined both sites down to a minimistic look and feel. If you're reading this here, then you might want to have a look at the mystery site. I made some nifty banners over there that I'll replicate over here on the western site...soon.

Anyway, after I fixed up the mystery site, both sites were where I wanted them to be. I had this moment during a lull on Memorial Day where I walked up to my standing desk, ready to power on the PC and start tweaking...

...until I realized I had nothing left to tweak. At least not in the short-term. The only thing left to do was write.

That's a nice place to be.

Longarm and the Bank Robber's Daughter by Tabor Evans/James Reasoner

I knew about Longarm long before I read a single one of his cases.

My grandfather only read westerns. They were stacked and double-stacked in a few bookshelves throughout his house in Tyler, Texas. Most of them were the big names: Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey, Luke Short, etc. I was a Star Wars kid so I paid those old paperbacks no mind. But they had great covers, including the ones for Longarm. My grandfather didn’t have many Longarm novels distinctive back in those days with a nearly all white cover and a few images, but he had a few. My dad’s recollection of why my grandfather read those novels was that he had read everything else, probably more than once. Now, I wasn’t a dummy back in the day, but a cowboy book with a pretty lady mostly undressed meant something. There was sex in them thar pages! It was a small miracle I never scanned those books on summer nights, trying to find those particular sex scenes. Heck, if I’d have actually read the books, I would have discovered just how entertaining the stories actually were.

But I wasn’t ready in the early 80s. I am ready now. So I cracked open Longarm and the Bank Robber’s Daughter. This is the 301st entry in the series that began in the late 70s and ran all the way until 2015 with the 436th installment! Custis Long, nicknamed “Longarm,” is a deputy U.S. Marshal in the old west, likely the 1880s. He is based in Denver, Colorado, and is sent all over the region to solve cases and bring bad guys to justice. And to bed women along the way.

Why this novel? I have four of them right now, three of which were written by James Reasoner. Yeah, for those that don’t know, “Tabor Evans” was a house name that many different writers used. Mainly, I wanted to see how a Longarm novel was constructed. So I opened up each one and read the opening passages. This is how Bank Robber’s Daughter starts.

Longarm jerked open the door of his rented room and growled, “What the hell do you want?”

Then his jaw tightened as he realized that Death had come knocking on this mild spring evening in Denver.

Death wore the pale, haggard face of an old man who clutched at his middle. Crimson blood welled between the fingers of the hands he pressed against his belly. He leaned forward and croaked, “G-Gold…”

Bingo! If I had picked this book up in a bookstore back when it was published in 2003, I would have walked out with it. Sold with three paragraphs. Action in three paragraphs. And that’s pretty much how this story rolls.

It turns out old man is Floyd Pollard, recently released from prison, and who shared a cell with Clete Harrington, an old bank robber that Longarm put in prison. The loot Harrington stole was never found, but Pollard’s dying words were “Sweetwater Canyon.” Naturally, Longarm is assigned the case and he’s about to head out to Sweetwater Canyon, New Mexico, when Emily Harrington shows up. She’s the titular daughter and, after a few more scrapes, Longarm agrees that she tag along.

What follows is a very good story about hidden gold, a range war, and enough clues scattered throughout the book that, upon learning the truth at the end, you realize Reasoner laid it all out for you. The action-packed structure of the book is such that, even if you get a chapter mostly of traveling down from Colorado to New Mexico with the characters talking, something happens at the end of the chapter that compels you to keep going. Definition of a page turner.

I didn’t know what to expect when the sex scenes arrived. How would they be written? How graphic would they be? Well, it turns out that the scenes were rather romantic. The action is spelled out, but the words Reasoner uses to describe the anatomy and what’s happening are euphemistic. You know exactly what’s going on and being done, but the word choices are nice. I emailed James to ask him about that and he said the descriptions were up to the discretion of the individual writer. I prefer it this way.

The ending was a nice surprise. By the time I read the last word, I was grinning ear to ear. I so thoroughly enjoyed this book that I immediately started another. But that’s a different review.