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RARA-AVIS: Hard-boiled westerns
I've just finished reading Donald Hamilton's 1956 western _Mad River_;
fine hard-boiled writing, action, and characters. The novel features a
pragmatic and not particularly virtuous hero, and a supporting cast of
characters displaying various shades of "bad" behavior. With just a
superficial rewrite this would have made a fine "noir" crime story.
Which brings up another point: there is little guidance available for
those of us who want to read hard-boiled or noir fiction dressed up in
western clothes. Of course I recognize hard-boiled writers whose work
crossed genres: Hamilton, Elmore Leonard, W.R. Burnett, and others. Some
modern writers like Loren D. Estelman, Bill Pronzini and Ed Gorman
(whose western series featuring the bounty-hunter Guild is harsher and
bleaker than his crime work, in my opinion) also write occasionally in
both genres. When it comes to the writers of the heyday of the pulp
paperback who seldom ventured out of the western genre, however, I'm
almost completely at a loss. There must be other good "hard-boiled
westerns" out there; does anyone have any suggestions? Is anyone aware
of reference books or secondary material which covers this subject?
Jim Stephenson
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