The Fatal Frontier

A collection of western stories by leading crime and mystery writers includes such contributions as "Riverboat Fighter" by Brian Garfield and "Not a Lick of Sense" by Bill Pronzini, as well as works by Elmore Leonard, John Jakes, and Loren D. Estleman.

Readers might be surprised to see stories by Loren Estleman, Marcia Muller and Joe Gores set in the old West. They shouldn't be. Bill Pronzini's introduction notes that the heroic figures of crime fiction can be traced to rugged American frontiersmen, an idea put forward by Dashiell Hammett (also the premise of Robert B. Parker's doctoral dissertation). Gorman and Greenberg have collected western crime stories by some of the best contemporary mystery and crime writers. Elmore Leonard's "The Boy Who Smiled" tells a classic tale of long-delayed frontier revenge. Gores scores with "Gunman in Town," a story of a smitten young man framed for a rape that never happened. Far from his usual upscale Boston precincts, Jeremiah Healy stages a western showdown with a twist in "To Tally the Dead." Livia Washburn literally combines old westerns with 20th-century detective stories in "Hollywood Guns," which features Lucas Hallam, a part-time PI who also works as a movie stuntman. Getting his gun repaired for a William S. Hart epic, Hallam is led by his knowledge of western lore into a real shoot-out. John Jakes, Brian Garfield and Jon L. Breen are among the 23 excellent writers heading down these mean trails.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Readers who enjoy both westerns and mysteries have certainly noticed the similarities between urban hard-boiled fiction and the Wild West adventures set in the late nineteenth century. Editors Gorman and Greenberg have assembled this collection to celebrate the literary evolution from cowboy to private eye. Although the authors of many of the 23 western stories included here--Elmore Leonard, Bill Pronzini, Marcia Muller, and Jeremiah Healy, among them--are now associated primarily with crime fiction, all have spent time on the range as well. Highlights include Leonard's "The Boy Who Smiled," an unsettling revenge tale, and H. A. DeRosso's "Vigilante," which offers a revealing look at a man who takes justice into his own hands. Each piece is capably introduced with an overview of the author's western writing career and its place in his or her overall body of work. Pronzini's general introduction traces the evolution of the cowboy to the private eye through the pulps and dime novels of the 1920s and 1930s. A fine collection sure to please fans of both genres. Wes Lukowsky