#24: A Badge for Brazos by E Jefferson Clay

Benedict and Brazos are a pair of ill-matched gun-hands hunting Confederate gold; but when they decide to make a little cash providing law in a small town they find out it's anything but sleepy there in E. Jefferson Clay's A Badge for Brazos.

Clay is actually Paul Wheelahan, an Australian writer who wrote a series of westerns featuring this Yankee cardsharp and Confederate bruiser, as well as lots of and lots of other pulp paperbacks and comics.  This one leans a little towards comedy with a fair amount of gunplay.

I got this in a stack of Cleveland Westerns I lucked into, hard to find in the wild.  A fun read.

#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.

#62: All's Hell on Peach Street by Brett McKinley

A young man, more or less raised by a frontier town when he was orphaned, inadvertently wins a shoot-out with a deadly outlaw; when the rest of the gang seeks revenge, the town rises up to protect him in Brett McKinley's All's Hell on Peach Street.

This oater from Cleveland Publishing, a long-time Australian company, was actually written by Paul Wheelahan, who wrote hundreds of westerns for Cleveland under a fistful of names (as well as writing comic books and TV shows).

I didn't know anything about the McKinley moniker and picked it up based on the offbeat title alone.  It's an above-average western with an interesting plot and characters and lightning-fast action.

I find it extremely difficult to find Cleveland westerns in the United States, but happily got this for my beloved Kindle and read it very quickly.  Interested in reading more from this writer, under whatever name.