#4: One More for the Road by Larry Kent

New York P.I. Larry Kent swings into action knocking out a slavery ring in this entry in the long-running series by Australian author Desmond Dunn, One More for the Road.

This series came out as a response to the Carter Brown series, another Australian writing rat-a-tat style detective novels with hot .45s and cold dames, and spawned several hundred entries.

Dunn delivers about what you would expect, with hard-boiled beats and a lack of finely-shaded observations on gender, race, and the leading social issues of the day.  Most surprisingly, Kent is a Viet Nam vet, although the story reads with more of a 40s-50s vibe.

Fun for those who like this kind of pulp.  

I read this one quickly from my beloved Kindle.

#43: Gun Protege by Shad Denver

An aging sheriff abruptly retires, and a town leader with a strong hand appoints an inexperienced clerk as the new sheriff; unfortunately, a pair of vengeance-minded brothers are heading their way in Shad Denver's Gun Protege.

I stumbled across a small collection of the hard-to-find Australian paperback Cleveland Westerns and have been reading them steadily.  I thought they were by a whole bunch of different authors, but several I picked up in a row have actually been by the prolific Desmond Robert Dunn, under various names.

Again Dunn writes an above-average western with a few surprises, including the secret motivation of the retired sheriff (albeit overall sharing a few similarities with another Dunn western I read recently, Danton's Day).

Cleveland Westerns are fast reads but often lightly sketched in; this "Shad Denver" one has a bit more to offer.  Enjoyable.

#36: Jury Seven by Brett Iverson

 A man comes back to a frontier town to claim his bride, only to find she has married another man; more inconveniently still, an outlaw gang trying to find a doctor for their wounded leader blows in and kidnaps her and some other women.  Now it's up to a ragtag bunch of townsmen and lawmen to rescue them in Brett Iverson's Jury Seven.

This is another fast-moving Cleveland Western I plucked off a stack and read on a camping trip, and it came to my surprise that this one was also written by Desmond Dunn (author of the "Gunn Halliday" novel I just finished).  Dunn was one of those hard-working pulpsters who cranked and cranked Westerns and detective novels for the apparently hungry Australian reader.

The "Jury Seven" of the title are seven men who decide to risk their lives raiding a courthouse where the outlaw gang--currently feuding as their leader lies dying--is holed up with the town's wives and daughters.  There are a couple of tough lawmen--also feuding--a reluctant gun-hand, and, as in many westerns, a coward who becomes a man when he has to.

It's a lot of plotting for a pretty slender western, but Iverson keeps the plot gears all meshing and throws in vivid characters.

Really enjoying Desmond Dunn under his various names and will look for more of his work.

#35: Danton's Day by Gunn Halliday

 An outlaw gang wants revenge on a small-town sheriff, but he skips town and leaves a hot-headed young deputy, and a burned-out former lawman, to take on the gang in Gunn Halliday's Danton's Day.

As one might suspect, "Gunn Halliday" is somebody else, in this case one of those many crazily prolific Australian writers Cleveland Publishing kept seeming to find; in this case Desmond Dunn, who wrote under a bushel of names and genres.

To me, this was an unusually robust Cleveland Western, as they are generally slender volumes with a single story arc sketched in.  Here we find a number of colorful characters and more intricate plot, still resolving about where you'd think, with the burned-out lawman finding the strength to coach the younger deputy into standing and fighting.

Halliday finds a way to make Danton's Day pop more than the average western, thus making me want to look for more from him.

I picked this out from a big stack of Cleveland Westerns I lucked into and read it quickly on a camping trip.