Ralph Compton (1934–1998)

I picked up Rawhide Flat expecting to read about a Marshal risking his life to get a convict out of a town that wants him dead. After all, that is what the description on the back told me to expect. The book wound up making a left turn about a third of the way through. It's really about a scramble for $50,000 in stolen loot and a false messiah who's planning a hostile takeover of the land.

The structure of the book was a little strange. I started to worry when about a hundred pages in the show more plot line with the convict seemed to have been wrapped up. But Joe was able to take the story in a new direction and keep the pages turning. He handles the pacing and suspense very well, often ending chapters with a cliffhanger.

I very much like Joseph A. West’s ‘voice’. He has an easy to read style that flows very well. Yet he manages to include enough detail to keep things from feeling vague. I’m wondering if he wrote this one in October, because the narrative had several gothic touches. Spectral night riders delivering severed heads, nuns with second sight and the apocalyptic preacher. Please don’t think it is anything other than a western. It’s not. And as a western, it is a good one. Lots of action and shootouts, all the things you read a western for. The gothic elements just give the book a certain kind of mood.

I liked it quite a bit. It fulfilled the promise of the previous Joseph A. West book I read, Guns of the Canyonlands. I liked the writing in that one, but there were numerous issues (a clumsy romance and characters acting out of character). Rawhide Flat is a better and more even book. Joe had a better handle on what kinds of men his characters are. I particularly liked the interaction between Marshal Crane and Sheriff Masterson and that Crane wasn't made out to be a stereotypical perfect western lawman. He was shown to have a violent temper; sometimes he had to muddle through problems and admitted when he was scared. It made him seem much more human than many pulp western heroes.

Overall the book was a quick and enjoyable read with interesting characters, exciting gunplay and a whopper of a finale. show less

This is a typical Compton effort actually written by Compton but it does stretch reality. The heroine is Danielle Strange who dresses in male clothing and ties on her father's two guns and goes on trek to find the 10 men who hung her father and kills them in fair gun fights. Besides hiding her female voice successfully for more than a year and only being 17 years old and thus slightly built, she must some how avoid taking her clothes off when with anyone in order to keep her identity secret. show more She does travel with several male friends at times and works on ranches as well making the masquerade even more difficult to believe.

In the 306 pages of this novel she is successful except once when she is badly wounded and the woman who gives her first aid discovers her secret. Other than the plot premise of a girl dressed as man crossing through Texas and the Indian Territory killing bad guys in absolutely amazing ways, the narrative follows tradition western literature in that it is full of action and descriptions of life in the west. If the reader wants to read more about Danielle's life of chasing her father's killers, look for the second volume, The Shadow of the Noose. show less

Fictionalized version of the events culminating in the Battle at the Little Bighorn. Pretty good outlining of the major events. Custer is presented in a less than flattering light.

One of the more interesting portions of the book has to do with the evacuation of the wounded survivors from the Reno and Benteen groups, via the steamboat 'Far West', which had delivered some materiel to the Seventh prior to their embarkation on the campaign. Navigating further up the Yellowstone River than any show more commercial craft had ever gone, the 'Far West' traversed shallow water, shifting sandbars, islands, rapids, and tight quarters to get the wounded back to Fort Bismark. show less

I’d really enjoyed the first Marcus Pelegrimas book I read: Skinners: Blood Blade. When I found out that he’d written a bunch of westerns under the pen name of ‘Marcus Galloway’, I thought I’d give them ago. Death of a Bad Man is my first, but friends, it won’t be my last.

Solomon Brakefield is a miner living in the dusty little scrap of a town of Warren, New Mexico. Really, even calling this tiny collection of tents ruled over by Charlie Lowell, the tight fisted owner of the show more silver mine; a ‘town’ is being generous.

When a gang of desperadoes ride through town and steal Charlie’s money, Sol takes it upon himself to save the day. This event and complications from it change him in unexpected ways, causing Sol to strike off and seek his fortune and the help of a bad man named Nestor Quarles.

I thought Sol’s ‘awakening’ was handled very well. Most of the characters were pretty two dimensional stock types, but there are moments with Sol that are very well done, with a better sense of characterization than I was expecting. Often the author would work in little throwaway moments of Sol reflecting on who he was and who he is becoming. This could easily have been done in a treacly or overbearing manner, but here it is pulled off pretty smoothly.

Nestor was also pretty deftly handled. He reminded me a bit of Clint Eastwood's character in Unforgiven. The author doesn't want you to hate Nestor. He doesn't go around gunning down widows or children for instance. But he never acts in a heroic, out of character manner either. As a reader you are never made to question how dangerous a man Nestor is.

Marcus Pelegrimas is never going to be confused with Henry James, but he really knows how to write good pulp novels. He has a very good sense of pacing that keeps interest in the story high. He narrates the story in a very conversational manner that gives the feel of a tale being told over a camp fire. The style is so conversational that he easily could have blown it with a turn of phrase that would have come off as too modern, pulling me out of the Old West, but he never did. I could see that he worked hard to put out writing that seems so natural.

The only real problem I had with the writing is that sometimes the description of action scenes was a little confusing. Only a very small flaw on a book that I enjoyed quite a bit.

I will be picking up the other two books he wrote under the Ralph Compton label and have already picked up the first couple of books from his Man from Boot Hill series. show less