Texas Fever by Donald Hamilton

-
Texas Fever (1960) by Donald Hamilton


While best known for his excellent Matt Helm espionage series, Donald Hamilton also wrote a fair share of westerns and it becomes obvious within the first few pages of Texas Fever that he was a genuine master of the genre. There is an immediate grasp of setting, characters, and purpose that sets the story into motion as we’re introduced to young Chuck McAuliffe following his hardened Civil War hero father on a cattle drive from the McAuliffe Ranch in Texas through Indian Territory to Kansas. 

We enter the story in mid-drive and are alongside as their team runs into all manner of obstacles, from deadly bushwhackers in its opening pages to brutally enforced quarantines against potentially disease-carrying Texas longhorns in the border towns. Driving the narrative is a constant revenge-fueled feud with the leader of the bushwhackers who murdered Chuck’s brother and the sadistic and corrupt deputy enforcing the quarantine. 

Throughout the book, Hamilton keeps subverting expectations and genre tropes to deliver a surprisingly adult tale that isn’t afraid to delve into some dark psychological terrain. There’s plenty of action—both with guns and fists—and a very frank sexual awareness that may have turned some heads in 1960 with anyone expecting a sanitized Hollywood-style cowboy oater. 

I quite literally couldn’t put this book down and read it in a rush to see where the unexpected plot turns would take me next. 

This really is the very good stuff—highly recommended!

Reviewed by Steve Carroll 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Atomic Werewolves and Man-Eating Plants (2023) Edited by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle

-
Image
Through the tireless efforts of pulp-renaissance men Robert Deis   and Wyatt Doyle, the world is once again a brighter place for those with a predilection   toward the Men’s Adventure Magazines   (MAMs) of a bygone era. The duo’s ability   to mine the depths of the MAM archives to pull together these themed editions   is unparalleled and the riches of their efforts is a gift to those like myself,   who generally missed out on these magazines in their original incarnation. The hook this time around is an entire edition built around   stories that are much more clearly fictional with supernatural overtones. This   makes it similar in some respects to the authors’ earlier   Cryptozoology Anthology . Whereas much of the popular MAM stories at   least dipped a toe into the real world, albeit it in greatly exaggerated tales   of manly men and their adventures, often while at   war, this collection revels   in tales of sci-fi and...
Read more

The Horror! The Horror! Diving into the Folk Horror Sub-Genre

-
Image
The following column was originally printed in Justin Marriott's Paperback Fanatic 47, which was published in July of 2023. You can buy a copy of it  here. There is something inherently unsettling about being in deeply rural locations where we, considering ourselves as enlightened and educated intellectuals, find ourselves confronted with beliefs and superstitions that seem backward and downright uninformed to our modern sensibilities. It can sometimes be as simple as walking into a gas station in the middle of nowhere and suddenly feeling like we’ve stepped into another era of history and speaking to a representative of the local citizenry feels like navigating a wide gulf of both colloquial language and seemingly alien culture. It leaves us feeling decidedly ‘off’ and somehow inadequate. This discomfort lies at the heart of folk horror. Though the term ‘folk horror’ didn’t enter into the modern vernacular until...
Read more

The Paperback Kung Fu Phenomenon Part 1 – The 1970s!

-
Image
The following column was originally printed in Justin Marriott's  Paperback Fanatic 46 , which was published in January of 2023. You can buy a copy of it  here . While   the martial arts have been a deeply ingrained part of various Asian cultures   and their literature for centuries, their influence in western culture was   a   direct result of military exposure to Eastern fighting forms during World War   II in both China and Japan and later during the Korean War. Servicemen   brought   an interest in these esoteric fighting styles back home with them and soon   their influence found its way into the collective psyche. Shortly   thereafter,   the Hong Kong movie scene exploded in the late 60s and spilled over into the   rest of the world in the early 70s. Suddenly Kung Fu was   everywhere from the suburban   neighborhood cinema to TV screens, comic books, and even Top 40 commercial pop   radio ( Everybody w...
Read more