THE LAW OF BEN HODGE

 

THE LAW OF BEN HODGE
By Matt Chisholm
Cover art by Walter Popp
Panther, July 1959

The town simmered with hate between the north and the south, between the townsman and the drover, between the law and the lawless.

Hodge tramped the streets of the old town with a star on his vest, knowing the mob would kill him so that they could hang his prisoner…knowing the Texas drovers would kill him to rescue the murderer.

Hodge knew that there could only be one law now…his law – The Law of Ben Hodge.

This is the third and final book Matt Chisholm wrote about Ben Hodge. The previous stories are briefly mentioned but you don’t need to have read them to fully enjoy this tale. In those earlier books, Hodge was trying to save himself from being hanged. In this one Hodge is trying to protect a guilty man from lynch law.

Hodge finds himself reluctantly wearing a star when the towns’ lawman is laid up. A drunken cowboy has accidently shot and killed a child. The townsfolk want his neck stretched immediately. The drovers want to free their friend. Everybody wants Hodge out of the way so they can do what they feel is right. Both sides prepare to fight each other so they can get to the man they want.

Once Hodge accepts the badge, he intends to enforce the law. He soon has his suspicions about the killing. Was it accidental or done on purpose? If the latter, what is the motive? Behind his back, powerful townsmen plot the death of Hodge’s prisoner and professional gunmen prepare to carry out their boss’s orders. 

Chisholm builds the tension well as the story swiftly moves towards its violent conclusion. Along the way there are plenty of bursts of action. Hodge takes some punishment too. As the plot becomes more complicated it is hard to see how any of the main characters will survive. Hodge’s wife Rose has a part to play, although she is unaware of the danger she is in and Hodge doesn’t know either. 

I did feel this story wasn’t as strong as the previous Hodge books. That may be because I’ve read many more tales about a lawman trying to protect his prisoner from a mob than I have where the protagonist literally has a rope around his neck and has moments to somehow free himself from the noose. Having said that, The Law of Ben Hodge was still a very entertaining read and left me looking forward to reading more from this author very soon.

Matt Chisholm is a pseudonym used by Peter Watts, a British writer who has long been one of my favourite western authors. 

SHERIFF OF BIG HAT

 

SHERIFF OF BIG HAT
By Barry Cord
A Wagon Wheel Western, 1958

Three men rode into Del Rio on three different trails. They were known as the Unholy Three – and they deserved their nickname. Doc, Jackson, and the Kid, were their names. They had nothing in common – except a willingness to hire out their guns.

Barry Cord packs a lot into this short western. Questions come at the reader from the first pages. Who are the Unholy Three being the main one to start with. They ride together but know little about each other. It seems they’ve been hired to stop a range war, but it soon become evident there’s a lot more at stake than that. 

It’s not long before the Kid’s past is revealed. Del Rio is the town the Kid grew up in. It’s to town he fled with the accusation of murder hanging over his head. Soon his relationships with various townsfolk cause more problems, especially when the Kid rips the badge of the town’s sheriff and pins it one his own shirt. What of the girl the Kid left behind? She’s the daughter of the old sheriff and the sister of the man the Kid is supposed to have killed.

As the tale races through its many twists and turns it becomes evident there isn’t going to be a happy ending for many of the characters, if any. There’s a dark tone to the proceedings. Men make promises that they’ll kill each other. Bullets fly thick and fast. Some of the bad guys are obvious but the author keeps some a secret, such as who killed Ann’s brother and who murdered the Kid’s father. 

I’ve read a quite a few books and short stories by Barry Cord and I can’t remember his descriptions of violence and torture ever being quite so graphic as they are in a couple of scenes in this book. 

Barry Cord is a pseudonym used by Peter Germano and I was once more thoroughly entertained by one of his books. This may not be the best of his work, but it is certainly worth reading. 

Arcadia House, who put out the Wagon Wheel Westerns really let the author down and it really makes me wonder if they employed a proof reader. For instance, a word that should finish a sentence isn’t there, but it does turn up at the end of the previous page all by itself. There are also words with missing letters or they are badly printed so it’s hard to read them. The gaps between words and sentences vary in size too. None of this makes it unreadable though. I do have one or two other Wagon Wheel Westerns and I am now intrigued to see of they are as badly printed as this one. 

DEAD SHOT

 

LUKE JENSEN, BOUNTY HUNTER 2
DEAD SHOT
By William W. Johnstone with J.A. Johnstone
Pinnacle Books, July 2013

Luke Jensen brings a body to Rio Rojo. After all, it’s his job, and he’s going to get paid. But before he can collect the bounty for killing a killer, two notorious criminals hit the Rio Rojo bank. Now Luke can’t get paid unless he catches professional bandit Gunner Kelly and his Apache sidekick Dog Eater. Unfortunately, a would-be man hunter is after the money-toting outlaws too, and young Hobie McCullough is mostly a menace to himself. With a green kid to protect, renegade Mexican soldiers, and a beautiful runaway bride crossing Luke’s trail, the blood hunt takes one deadly detour after another…until Luke ends up smack dab in a nest-of-vipers outlaw hideout. There, he discovers the true identity of Gunner Kelly, what kind of ungodly terror he has planned, and just how dangerous being a bounty hunter can be…

Even though this book reads like a number of different incidents that see Luke Jensen fighting for his life, each of the story threads is held together by the hunt for Gunner Kelly and Dog Eater. The need to sort out each crisis Luke finds himself in quickly so he can continue to track the outlaws, glues everything together well. Each segment has its own strong storyline and is filled with memorable characters, some of which will turn up later to cause even more deadly problems for Luke.

Luke is a determined man. A man who won’t let anything get in the way of his goal. He’d happy ride around the troubles he comes upon so he can just get on with his task of taking down Kelly and the Apache. But Hobie doesn’t let him as he feels it’s his duty to help people in distress and Luke has no choice but to help.

The lengthiest part of this book is the story of the runaway bride. Why is a band of gunmen trying to kill her? Luke is not sure that is what they are trying to do and is soon proved right. This section of the book features as dramatic stagecoach ride before Luke, Hobie, the bride-to-be and other stagecoach passengers find themselves trapped in a dead-end canyon which provides an exciting how are they going to get out of that situation. In fact, the book contains a lot of cliff-hanger endings to chapters and scenes that ensure the reader will keep turning the pages. 

Action sequences come regularly and the fights are fairly brutal at times. Characters are nicely fleshed out making you care about their future or want to see them get their just rewards. Pacing is excellent too. Even though some of the story threads were resolved as I expected, there were also some surprises that caught me off-guard. 

Hopefully it won’t be as long before I read book three, Bloody Sunday, as it was between reading the first book and this one. 

THRILLING WESTERN - SUMMER 1950

 

THRILLING WESTERN

British Edition, Vol. IV, No. 1

Atlas Publishing, Summer 1950

This is a shortened edition of the American November/December 1949 edition of Thrilling Western. The British edition only reprints four of the originals nine stories along with the short quiz. 

The opening novelette is The Coffin Riders by Bradford Scott. This is a Walt Slade tale that sees him take on a lawless killer band that holds the Sin Cajo country in a grip of fear. Bradford Scott is a pseudonym for A. Leslie Scott, a prolific writer for the pulp magazines who also wrote many of the Jim Hatfield stories as Jackson Cole. The Coffin Riders didn’t really offer anything new, just followed a typical storyline for a Slade or Hatfield tale. Slade rides into the area, keeps his identity a secret for a while, has a fist fight (which is beautifully depicted by Orban in a full-page illustration), talks to his horse and himself a lot, uses his guns, before explaining who the bad guys are, what they’d been doing and why along with the mistakes they’d made that enabled him to bring them down, then rides off strumming his guitar and singing. This was an ok predictable read that felt like it was just going through the motions which is why I’m moved say this isn’t one of the best stories I’ve read from Scott. 

A Man Like General Custer by Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson is next. This is another novelette by a new author to me. This story felt like one long battle between the U.S. Army and the Apache which tests the characters of Lieutenants Beck and Carney in a fiery crucible of war and danger. Yes, we’ve met similar characters in countless stories before – the ambitious man who doesn’t think things through so endangers his men often as he hunts for glory and the more level headed Beck who covers for Carney’s mistakes when he can. Of course, there’s the Major who is at his last straw with Carney. Things aren’t helped by the Major’s daughter being sweet on Carney. There’s plenty of action and a seemingly endless supply of Apaches to be killed. The ending left a smile on my face. Wheeler-Nicholson’s prose kept this tale fresh and exciting and for me it is the best story within this issue and it certainly left me looking forward to reading more of his work sometime assuming I can find more as he only wrote just over twenty western pulp tales and I don’t have any more. 

Barry Scobee’s One Barrel of Water is the third yarn. This short story tells the tale of hard-bitten men who clash over that precious fluid in the desert heat. It’s not just a story of the fight for water as there is a little more to it than that. Namely some lost treasure. I wasn’t sure about this one as I began to read as it didn’t really hold my attention but I’m glad I persevered as it picked up and became an entertaining tale that had some well written action scenes. This was the first story I’ve read by Scobee and I’ll certainly give him another go. 

The last story is a third novelette. The Son of Shiftless Joe by Bruce Douglas. He’s another author that I haven’t read before and this story is the only one I have by him. Bruce Douglas is a pseudonym for Theodore Wayland Douglas and he wrote just over eighty western pulp stories. This one tells the tale of young Tad Jamieson as he sticks his neck out for trouble when he decides to raise sheep in cattle territory. To complicate matters, Tad is sweet on the daughter of his cattleman neighbour, so that is a romance that is seemingly doomed. Even though it is the kind of story the seasoned western reader will have come across many times Douglas’ writing kept me interested. Threats are made, sheep escape onto public land and a range war is on the horizon. The tough talk is lightened occasionally by comments from Tad’s two hands, Buck Bailey and Half-Pint King. Overall, this was a fun read even though it played out exactly as I expected it to.

If you haven’t guessed already, my favourite story within this issue of Thrilling Western was A Man Like General Custer. One-Barrel of Water and The Son of Shiftless Joe kept my attention and I enjoyed reading them. It’s just a shame The Coffin Riders was a bit of a let-down. 

KLAW

KLAW
By W.L. Fieldhouse
Tower Books, 1980

When John Klawson returned from the War to Great Ford, he found his parents dead, victims of a phony “Indian raid,” and their property confiscated by banker Warren T. Jennings. And the rest of the town was under the control of Jennings and his hired guns. Klawson vowed revenge, but Jennings struck first, sending his hardcases after the ex-soldier. In a violent battle Klawson lost his right hand and was left for dead. But he survived and was hidden by friends until his arm healed. A blacksmith fitted him with a gleaming steel claw for a hand, and Klaw, as he became known, learned all over how to use a revolver and a rifle. Soon he was ready to exact vengeance on Jennings and his crew. One by one they would die – painfully – if Klaw had his way!

Whilst America tried to inject new life into the western with the introduction of explicit adult content, the British produced books that were filled with graphic violence and brought the anti-hero more into the limelight. Some of these series such as Edge and Apache became massive successes in America too, so much so that American publishers jumped on the bandwagon and launched their own series with similar content such as Kilburn, Cutter, Hawk (not to be confused with the British series with the same name), and The Loner. I believe the three Klaw books was another of these, as was the equally violent Six-Gun Samurai series that Fieldhouse wrote alongside two other authors as Patrick Lee. 

This book has a slow start as the author fills the reader in on the Klawson’s backstory – events that lead to him facing Jennings in Great Ford. The momentum picks up after Klawson loses his hand and the blacksmith creates the claw for him. This claw is detachable and Klawson can fit other attachments in place of it, such as a modified handgun. This is where the pace of the story begins to move forward at a gallop. Revenge is all that Klawson lives for. As the death toll mounts Klawson becomes know as Klaw. Yet, unlike those anti-heroes of the British westerns, Klaw keeps some of his compassion which, at times, makes him seem like a bit of a contradiction. One minute dishing out death in a completely cold-blooded way, then showing his tender side, such as when he meets Elena and when he helps those back in Great Ford. This makes him a somewhat complex character, a man who clings onto some of his humanity. 

The action scenes are well described in all their graphic brutality. There are some excellent set pieces such as the ambush in a fort that sees both Gatling guns and cannon used effectively. The author often switches between the various groups of characters so he can include more vicious violence as we follow the men Klaw is hunting for. As you’d expect, everything comes together for a savage conclusion.

Throughout the story there is mention of an organization, one that Jennings worked for. Who they are, and what their ultimate aims are is kept vague. On finishing Klaw I was left to wonder if they will be part of the plot of the second Klaw book. I guess I’ll have to read it to find out which is something I aim to do very soon.

I started this review with my thoughts on how some American western series seemed to have been created to cash in on the success of some of the British series. I’ve always wondered if one of the British authors read the Klaw books and used them as an inspiration for his series Claw? He even seems to give a nod of acknowledgement by naming the leader of the outlaws, who are responsible for the loss of the hero’s hand, Jennings. If he didn’t, that’s one hell of a coincidence. 

FOLLOW THE LONESOME TRAIL

FOLLOW THE LONESOME TRAIL

A Wild West Anthology complied by Allison Tebo

Published by KDP, August 2025

A trapper discovers he’s been left a poke of gold—but there’s a safe and a greedy bartender between him and his inheritance. The residents of a mining camp join forces to protect children who may or may not be royalty in disguise. And a pair of bandits get more trouble than they bargained for when the cargo they were hired to steal turns out to be somebody’s mail-order bride!

Find all this and more in this anthology, and prepare yourself for a wild West you only thought you knew as six authors go off-trail and blaze a new path.

Contents:

1. Safekeeping by Rachel Kovaciny

2. Two for the Trail by Allison Tebo

3. A Peculiar Kidnapping by A. Hartley

4. Gold is Where You Find It by Allison Tebo

5. The Princess of Flat Rock by Elisabeth Grace Foley

6. The Man with the Long-Barrelled Gun by Emily Hayse

7. Blaze of Memories by Allison Tebo

8. The Trouble with Rubies by Hannah Kaye

This just released collection of short stories offers a refreshing take on the western. All of them have strong roles for female leads. There are plenty of twists, many of which I didn’t see coming. There’s a bittersweet ending but most finish with an uplifting conclusion. There’s a lot of humour with a couple of the stories bordering on being outright comedy tales. Most of the stories have a light-hearted tone although you will find some thoughtful messages within the stories too. There are crazy situations that need fast thinking to resolve. The misunderstanding of an overheard conversation drives the plot of one of the stories. Another seems to follow a more traditional western storyline; that of a new widowed young mother about to lose her ranch until a lone man steps in to deal out justice because that is the right thing to do.

All of these stories captured my imagination and kept me turning the pages to see what happened next. I wished some of them were longer. A couple left me wondering if the lead characters would return in future tales. 

Yes, I have my favourites but I can honestly say I’d be happy to read more western stories by any of the authors in this collection – I’ve only read Elisabeth Grace Foley before. The three tales by Allison Tebo are much shorter than the others.

Overall, this is a strong collection of short stories from a group of talented authors. Recommended.

American readers can get a copy here

British readers can get a copy here

VENGEANCE TRAIL

VENGEANCE TRAIL
By Bill Brooks
Leisure Books, January 2009

Johnny Montana has racked up a lot of enemies in his days as a gambler, road agent and killer. And it seems the law has finally caught up with him. Shooting a U.S. senator was the last straw. But it’s a long way across Indian Territory to get Johnny to “Hanging” Judge Parker. And plenty of others are looking to exact their own vengeance. The Biggs boys have given up their successful hog farm to hunt down the man who shot their father between the eyes. Eli Stagg, a hard, cruel tracker, has been hired by the senator’s family to make sure their own version of justice is done. And the Comanche will kill just about anyone on their land.

With all hell about to break loose across the roughest territory in the state, Texas Ranger Henry Dollar is the only one who can prevent an utter bloodbath – if he can stay alive long enough himself.

Although the blurb seems to indicate that Henry Dollar is the central character in this book he isn’t. Neither is anyone else. The story switches regularly between those mentioned above, and more, as it builds in intensity. This allows the author to flesh out his characters, explaining their reasons for hunting Montana, sharing the emotions that drive them. As death and injury befall them, I soon began to wonder if any of them would be alive at the end.

Brooks’ descriptions of time and place are well written and the action scenes are hard hitting. His characters are memorable, both good and bad. Although the story has a pretty straight-forward plot Brooks tells it in a compelling way that makes the book difficult to put down until the end is reached. 

Having read other books by Brooks that all had a dark tone throughout I was surprised to find this one didn’t. This means it should appeal to a wider readership – those who don’t like too much graphic violence, explicit sex, or depressing themes in their reading. 

I found Vengeance Trail to be an enjoyable read and I’m now wondering where my other yet to read books by Bill Brooks are as I was left wanting to read more of his work soon.