The Legend of Caleb York

By Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins

Pinnacle, May 2016

Trinidad, New Mexico, is an oasis of civilization in an untamed desert ruled by outlaws, bank robbers and horse thieves. Sheriff Harry Gauge rules his town with an iron fist, a fast gun, and an unbridled thirst for power.

George Cullen sweated blood to carve a ranch from the wilderness. He’d rather take a bullet to the gut than give in to the greedy sheriff’s land grab. But a cattle empire isn’t all Gauge wants – he also has his eye on Cullen’s beautiful daughter Willa.

Cullen gets word out that he’s hiring the fastest gunslinger money can buy to take on the sheriff. When a stranger rides in, townsfolk wonder if this is the rancher’s hired gun. Wherever he came from, wherever he’s going, two things are clear – the stranger won’t be pushed…and his aim is deadly.

Originally published in 2015 as a hardcover this story is based on a screenplay, The Saga of Caleb York, written by Mickey Spillane for his friend John Wayne around 1959. It never made it to film due to Wayne’s production company struggling due to the losses his film The Alamo made. You can read much more about this, and how Max Allan Collins came to turn the screenplay into a novel at the beginning of the book. Collins is perhaps best known for his graphic novel Road to Perdition which inspired the Oscar winning film starring Paul Newman and Tom Hanks, 

Collins has written a book that is extremely readable. Due to when the screenplay was written you can easily imagine it as a film from the 1960’s or perhaps the 1970’s. Having said that Collins has adapted it so it doesn’t appear dated. Occasionally it has the feel of one of those hard-hitting detective films full of tough men and equally as hard women that Spillane wrote about in his Mike Hammer novels. All this, and some fairly graphic violence, mix perfectly to result in a top class western read that should please all fans of the genre.

There’s a couple of neat twists, and some great mystery surrounding the Stranger’s identity, surely he is Banion, the man who killed Caleb York? Sheriff Gauge, a lightning fast gun himself doesn’t care who the Stranger is, just knows he’s a man to be got rid of in any way possible. The Stranger also has two women to deal with but can the fact that he is a killer be overcome by one of them so her true feeling can emerge?

For the seasoned western reader the plot falls under the banner of traditional but there’s nothing wrong with that, especially as I’ve already said the book is so well written by Max Allan Collins that it is a pleasure to read. So much so that I am looking forward to reading the sequel, The Big Showdown, that is already available as a hardcover and is due out in paperback next March.

"Whadda We Do Now, Butch?"

Another in my series of occasional reviews of books that are not quite westerns but should appeal to western readers.

“WHADDA WE DO NOW, BUTCH?”

by Shel Talmy

Pan, 1978

‘Some damned Yankee detective held me up with a story about some other damn Yanks,’ said the chief superintendent, ‘desperadoes he called them…small-time crooks with the improbably names of Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid!’

London in the good old 1900’s, Hansom cabs on Sloane Street and every gentleman with his club in St. James. Jonathan De Ford staying at the Cadogan Hotel in his interminable pursuit of Butch and Sundance who are living in Mayfair, as the guest of Lord Reggie Ratlett.

If you thought the Old West’s very latest legends were filled with lead in darkest Bolivia, R.I.P. … then you will be fascinated to learn how they managed to stay alive and afloat all the way to London town and into the – very secret – service of H.M. Government…

As soon as you start reading this it becomes obvious Talmy has used the portrayal of Butch and Sundance as by Paul Newman and Robert Redford on which to base his characterizations of these two famous outlaws. Not only that there’s the inclusion of Jonathan De Ford and many memories of scenes from that excellent film. There are many moments of humour too and a great supporting cast of characters, both fictional and real. Sundance gets to teach poker to a group of men who include Conan Doyle and Winston Churchill. Meanwhile Butch is being interviewed for a newspaper by an author called H.G. Wells.

Talmy writes well and soon had me caught up his fast moving story as Butch and Sundance find themselves, reluctantly, working for the British Government against the Germans and the threat of an inevitable war. Everything builds up to an exciting train robbery, which reveals that not everyone is who they say they are. And all the time Butch and Sundance are trying to keep one step ahead of De Ford as his obsession with catching them, and having them deported, which could lead to the failure of the mission and worse, our heroes deaths.

If you’re a fan of the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, then I reckon, like me, you’ll enjoy this book too.