This collection of western stories from David Cranmer’s Beat to a Pulp imprint is a welcome addition of new short fiction to
the genre. As followers of his online zine already know, Cranmer has a fine eye
and ear for picking writers with a gift for storytelling.
Beat to a Pulp readers will find some familiar names here.
For sheer volume of output and award winning, that list would be led by James
Reasoner and quickly followed by Patti Abbott, Chuck Tyrell, Wayne D. Dundee,
Kieran Shea, and Evan Lewis. They are joined by the notable talents of relative
newcomer Matt Pizzolato.
Patti Abbott deserves mention first for not only
representing her gender in a genre that has long thought of itself as rightly
dominated by male writers—and second for venturing into western territory from
her usual fictional domains, which I always think of as being situated
somewhere in or near Detroit. (I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong
about that.) Her offering here, “The True Story of Boy Kaleen,” is an
entertaining tour de force of Old West vernacular.
James Reasoner’s “Rattler” works a tight situation between
two men with guns and a rattlesnake with opinions of its own. For someone with
a snake phobia, the story has probably the surest opening for grabbing
attention: “Cobb had been holed up in the rock for about an hour when the big,
diamondback rattler crawled over the back of his legs.”
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| "Go It, You – – " |
Evan Lewis in “Too Many Crocketts” plagues a grandson of
Davy Crockett with a talkative ghost of the man “born on a mountaintop in
Tennessee.” Chuck Tyrell’s spooky “Line Rider” spends time with a cowboy too
long alone and too long deprived of female company. It’s an erotic tale best
described as a waltz into darkness.
Well into the spirit of western realist noir, you’ll find
the expert hand of Kieran Shea. His story “A Decent Man” is a grimly melancholy
account of a man attempting vainly to repay another man’s wrong. Matthew
Pizzolato’s gunslinger Wesley Quaid is more successful as he confronts some
bullies in “Day of Reckoning.”
That leaves the long story, “The Empty Badge,” by Wayne D.
Dundee, who brings us another tale of the outlaw marshal, Cash Laramie. This
one, set on the high plains borderland of Nebraska and Wyoming involves a
traveling medicine show, a case of amnesia, bank robbers, and a Cash Laramie
impersonator.
Together, I can say from firsthand experience, the stories collected in Trails
of the Wild make for great bedtime reading. They are currently available in ebook format for kindle and the nook.
Further reading:
BITS reviews and interviews
Image credits:
Illustration by F.W. Schulz, 1907
Coming up: Richard Widmark, The Law and Jack Wade (1958)
Yep, good stuff!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the coverage, Ron. I was honored to be in the lineup for this collection.
ReplyDeleteThis was a lot of fun to put together and I appreciate all seven authors who made it happen. And I'm glad you spotlighted Patti. She's a marvelous western writer and I hope she continues to explore that reservoir of stories.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ron.
I read about this fine collection of western stories and I hope to read it soon. I'm glad it's available on Kindle.
ReplyDelete