Thursday, 24 July 2025

LONGARM AND SEÑORITA REVENGE

 

LONGARM AND SEÑORITA REVENGE
Book 415 of 436 + 29 Giant Editions
By Tabor Evans
Cover illustration by Milo Sinovcic
Jove, June 2013

The name makes cavalrymen cower, hard cases head for the hills, and bandidos cry, “Vámones!” They call her Señorita Revenge. Savage and merciless, she and her band of kill-crazy Kiowa have been cutting down soldiers like blades of grass in the Texas Big Bend country north of the Rio Grande.

If any man can declaw this homicidal hellcat, it’s Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long.

But when Longarm arrives at the cavalry outpost, he finds a half-mad major, his batty, blond daughter, a horribly scarred captain, and a mouth-watering but mysterious maiden – each of whom is hiding a secret. As Longarm puts the pieces together, he draws ever closer to ending this beautiful buckskin-clad butcher’s reign of vengeance… 

Harsh landscapes and tougher characters – brutal characters in many cases. Seductive, stunningly beautiful women who can be as savage as any man should the need arise, and it does, often. Vicious action scenes. Plot twists that took me by surprise. A breath-taking stagecoach ride. This book has them all, and more. Longarm sure has to keep his wits about him or he’ll end up as one of the deceased. 

The story moves along at terrific speed. Chapters ending on cliff-hangers ensuring I’d keep turning the pages. Great characters, especially Señorita Revenge. Mystery behind her true identity – I had my ideas but I wasn’t quite right. Hard-hitting fairly graphic violence and a couple of descriptive sex scenes – the latter to be expected as the Longarm books are billed as adult westerns, but don’t let them put you off reading this book or you’ll be missing out on a great tale.

I’m being purposefully vague on the plot, and naming characters and their relationships to each other as I don’t want to spoil any part of this book for anyone who has yet to read it. 

The author behind the pseudonym of Tabor Evans this time around is Peter Brandvold and his take on Longarm has always been grittier than most of the other authors who wrote for this series. Think spaghetti rather than Hollywood western. 

After finishing Longarm and Señorita Revenge I was left eagerly wanting to hunt through my collection to dig out another of Peter Brandvold’s entries into this series and start reading it straightaway. Recommended. 

American readers can get a copy here
British readers can get a copy here

Thursday, 17 July 2025

BULL'S EYE STAGE COACH


BULL’S EYE STAGE COACH
By Billy Hall
Robert Hale, March 2013

Marshal Dwight Stern and his posse are overseeing the loading of a shipment of gold onto a heavily armoured stage coach when they are ambushed in a surprise attack.

With Stern’s fiancée held in the grip of one of the attackers and a double-barrelled shotgun pointing at her head, there’s no time to play nice. With his hand on his gun and a prayer for the gunman to make a mistake and move the gun from Belinda’s head, all he needs is a split second….

The story starts some time before the incident the blurb outlines. We witness Stern laying the law down in his town and also share his concerns about a number of strangers who are arriving and looking for jobs, especially when one of the tries to befriend Belinda. Then there’s another stranger who implies he’s on Stern’s side, but in what, and can he be trusted?

It isn’t long before the robbery takes place and the outlaws get away with the gold and take Belinda with them. Stern races to save her but will he get to her before she’s ravished and killed? 

Billy Hall was the name Billy Hallsted used for his Black Horse Westerns. He had 39 published before he passed in May 2015. I read quite a few of his books and have always enjoyed them. Bull’s Eye Stage Coach proved to be another entertaining read.

Hallsted paced the story beautifully, moving from one tense scene to another making for some suspenseful reading. There’s plenty of gunplay in this tale too. The stranger who says he’s there to help Stern allowed the author to add some mysterious intrigue into the plot. All this combines to make this a difficult book to put down before I discovered how it all played out.

Luckily for me, I have a few more BHWs by Billy Hall in my collection that I’ve yet to read. On the strength of this one, I’m sure it won’t be too long before I pick up another.

American readers can get a copy here.
British readers can get a copy here.

Saturday, 5 July 2025

WESTERN STORY - March 1949

WESTERN STORY
British Edition, Vol. VI, No.5
Atlas Publishing, March 1949
Cover art by William R. Leigh

This publication of Street & Smith’s Western Story is a partial reprint of the American issue from September 1948. The UK version first appeared in 1939 and continued, with slight changes to its title, until 1961. By my count, there were 167 issues. 

We start with the short story Light Up Your Six-Gun by Ralph Yergen. He’s a new author to me who wrote just over 100 stories for the western pulps. This quick paced yarn is about a cigar salesman, Horatio Oberlander Holyoke, who finds one of his best customers, Blaine, in jail accused of murder. Holyoke sets out to prove Blaine is innocent. Whist doing so, we find that Holyoke is very handy with a gun. Holyoke has to save himself from a death trap and the explanation of how he realized he was in grave danger is linked to his profession and that put a grin on my face. I also laughed out loud at the final line of the story, that even though I knew it was coming, I still found it funny. This was a very readable tale that left me wondering if Holyoke appeared in any of Yergen’s other stories cos I’d certainly like to read them if he did.

Peter Dawson’s novella, Retribution River, is next. Dawson is a pseudonym used by Jonathan H. Glidden, who had over 100 stories published in the pulps. His story is a land grab tale. A ranch owning banker, Cavendish, decides he wants more land and sets about driving other ranchers away. The main character is Pete Sarran and he teams up with another couple of men who’ve been driven out. Riding with them is a man named Brazos who none of them know. Brazos talks them into getting back at Cavendish by robbing his bank. The raid doesn’t go according to plan and Brazos rides off with the loot. Sarran was right to mistrust Brazos and sets out to find the double-crosser and there’s a surprise waiting for him when he does track down his quarry. I’ve not read many stories by Glidden, but I’ve enjoyed the handful I have, and Retribution River was just as good as any of them, even though it did have a predictable plot. 

Another novella follows, Mavericks of Moonrock Range by Rod Patterson, who is another author I haven’t read before. Patterson had over 200 stories published in western pulps. Patterson pulled me into his tale immediately with questions that needed answers. Clyde Desbrow sees a note in a newspaper telling him to return to his father’s ranch by a specific date if he wants to claim his inheritance. What he finds at the ranch shocks him but he intends to sort out the wrongs he sees happening in his home. Patterson’s writes well, his prose creating a dark tone to a story filled with tense scenes and intrigue. I can’t really say anymore without spoiling it other than to say I wasn’t a fan of the nick-of-time ending which made me think the author did this as he was running out of pages. This story, for me, would have been much better longer with a bit more explanation as to why certain characters did what they did. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this tale a lot and am eager to read more of Patterson’s work.

Next we have a novelette by Wayne D. Overholser called The Long Haul. Overholser had just over 400 western tales under his own name and a more under a variety of pseudonyms published in western pulps. The Long Haul tells the tale of a decision lawman Lance Gregg has to make: does he take in a wanted man as the law says he should or let him go out in a blaze of glory taking down other outlaws? That’s all there is to the plot, but it was enough to keep me turning the pages to see which choice Gregg would make. The tales ends with a swift shootout that brings everything to a satisfactory conclusion.

Walt Coburn’s Guns Across the Rio Grande is a novella that tells the story of The Rio Kid who has been falsely accused of murdering a Texas Ranger. The Ranger’s Captain, Jess Clayton, doesn’t believe the Kid, whose real name is Carlos McCarty, is the killer. Clayton helps the Kid escape from jail and then they set out to track down and bring to justice the real murderer which involves a cattle drive to tempt some rustlers to steal the herd. This is a fast paced read that includes some great action scenes. I enjoyed reading it, even though it was obvious how things would turn out. I did have to take my time with some of the speech as Coburn writes it as his characters say it, for example the Mexican Pepe says “Por Dios, ees een my blood to be a gon fighter!” I do find this kind of writing adds flavour to these stories so it’s welcomed by me if not excessively done as it can really slow a story down if you have to re-read it to understand what is being said. Coburn was a popular author for the western pulps and had around 800 stories published in them.  

The last tale is a novella by Michael Trent called Badlands Showdown. Trent had nine stories published across a variety of western pulps so is probably the least known of the authors featured in this issue of Western Story. Jim Dunstan, foreman of the Aurora Land & Cattle Company is determined to bring an end to the rustling in the area. Trouble is, it seems a friend is passing on information to the gang of outlaws which, as distasteful as exposing who this will be, Dunstan sums it up by saying “Guilt and friendship don’t go together.” In such a short story it was easy to work out who the bad guy was and who would get the girl, but that didn’t spoil my enjoyment of this story. 

This British issue of Western Story also includes the poem Chuckwagon Menu by S. Omar Barker and the very short column Range Savvy by Gene King, neither of which struck a chord with me.

This pulp magazine also contains a bit of information about cover artist William R. Leigh telling us he was an author as well as an artist. Leigh wrote short stories on Indian life that appeared in a variety of American magazines. The story The Western Pony both written and illustrated by Leigh was named as one of the fifty best books of 1933 by the American Institute of Graphic Arts.

Overall, I thought this was a good issue of Western Story as I enjoyed all the stories it contained.