Friday, March 11, 2022

#9: So Long Waco by Ben Jefferson

A Confederate vet inadvertently sides with a group of outlaws against a band of Union soldiers, then has to throw in his lot with them, in Ben Jefferson's So Long Waco.

Jefferson was really extremely prolific Australian writer Paul Wheelahan, who penned under a lot of names and genres (including comic books).  

To that end, his speed leaves this one rather faintly sketched in, as our hero learns there is a schism between the more "noble" outlaws in the gang and the villainous ones, with the additional of an abandoned wife at a lonely ranch all having the expected results with gunplay and romance.

The Waco of the title, which I thought should have a comma, is the leader of the outlaw gang, Sam Waco.  It IS actually said in the novel.

For a very long time I have looked for Cleveland Westerns in the wild, a company which published multiple genres in a slender novella magazine-style format for more than 50 years in Australia.  They seem to be quite rare in their original form in the States.

I eventually settled on buying any I could find online, if I could find them lest than ten dollars each.  I finally found a Canadian willing to part with a half dozen at a reasonable rate, and this is the first from the stack.

No comments:

Post a Comment