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Fargo #2
Panama Gold
The brainchild of Amazon Kindle Number One bestselling western writers Mike Stotter and Ben Bridges, PICCADILLY PUBLISHING is dedicated to reissuing classic fiction from Yesterday and Today!
PANAMA GOLD
A kill-crazy soldier of fortune named Cleve Buckner was recruiting an army of murderers, gunmen and deserters from all over Central America. With foreign money behind him, Buckner’s job was to wreck the Panama Canal before it could be completed. Fargo’s mission was to stop Buckner and eliminate him and his army once and for all. It was a tall order … and probably the toughest mission Fargo had ever undertaken. But for $20,000, he decided to take the risk and see if he really could do the seemingly impossible.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Benjamin Leopold Haas was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1926. His imagination was inspired by the stories of the Civil War and Reconstruction as told by his Grandmother, who had lived through both. Ben’s father was also a pioneer operator of motion picture theatres, “ ... so I had free access to every theatre in Charlotte and saw countless films growing up, hooked on the lore of our own South and the Old West.”
Largely self educated (he had to drop out of college in order to support his family), Ben wrote his first story, a pulp short for a western magazine, when he was just eighteen. But when he was drafted into the Army, his dreams of becoming a writer were put on hold. He served as a Sergeant in the U.S. Army from 1945 to 1946, and saw action in the Philippines.
Returning home to Charlotte (and later Sumter, in South Carolina) in 1946, Ben married Douglas Thornton Taylor from Raleigh four years later. The father of three sons (Joel, Michael and John), Ben was working for a steel company when he sold his first novel in 1961. The acceptance coincided with being laid off, and thereafter he wrote full time.
A prolific writer who would eventually pen some 130 books under his own and a variety of pen-names, Ben wrote almost twenty-four hours a day. “I tried to write 5000 words or more every day, scrupulous in maintaining authenticity,” he later said.
Ben wanted to be a mainstream writer, but needed a way to finance himself between serious books, and so he became a paperback writer. Ben’s early pen names include Ben Elliott (his grandmother’s maiden name), who wrote Westerns for Ace; and Sam Webster, who wrote five books for Monarch. As Ken Barry he turned out racy paperback originals for Beacon with titles like The Love Itch and Executive Boudoir. But his agent was not happy about his decision to enter the western market, and suggested he represent himself on those sales. Ben had sent a trial novel to Harry Shorten of Tower Books. Ben’s family remembers it being A Hell of A Way to Die, written for Tower’s new Lassiter series. It was published in 1969, and editor Shorten told his new author to create a western series of his own. The result was Fargo.
The success of Fargo led to the Sundance series. Jim Sundance is a half-Cheyenne gunslinger who takes on the toughest jobs in order to raise funds to fight the corrupt Indian Ring back in Washington. The short-lived John Cutler series followed, and then perhaps Ben’s crowning achievement, the Rancho Bravo novels, published under the name Thorne Douglas.
Ben Haas died from a heart attack in New York City after attending a Literary Guild dinner in 1977. He was just fifty-one.
Fan favourite James Reasoner has hailed Ben as “one of the best action writers of all time”.
PANAMA GOLD
A kill-crazy soldier of fortune named Cleve Buckner was recruiting an army of murderers, gunmen and deserters from all over Central America. With foreign money behind him, Buckner’s job was to wreck the Panama Canal before it could be completed. Fargo’s mission was to stop Buckner and eliminate him and his army once and for all. It was a tall order … and probably the toughest mission Fargo had ever undertaken. But for $20,000, he decided to take the risk and see if he really could do the seemingly impossible.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Benjamin Leopold Haas was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1926. His imagination was inspired by the stories of the Civil War and Reconstruction as told by his Grandmother, who had lived through both. Ben’s father was also a pioneer operator of motion picture theatres, “ ... so I had free access to every theatre in Charlotte and saw countless films growing up, hooked on the lore of our own South and the Old West.”
Largely self educated (he had to drop out of college in order to support his family), Ben wrote his first story, a pulp short for a western magazine, when he was just eighteen. But when he was drafted into the Army, his dreams of becoming a writer were put on hold. He served as a Sergeant in the U.S. Army from 1945 to 1946, and saw action in the Philippines.
Returning home to Charlotte (and later Sumter, in South Carolina) in 1946, Ben married Douglas Thornton Taylor from Raleigh four years later. The father of three sons (Joel, Michael and John), Ben was working for a steel company when he sold his first novel in 1961. The acceptance coincided with being laid off, and thereafter he wrote full time.
A prolific writer who would eventually pen some 130 books under his own and a variety of pen-names, Ben wrote almost twenty-four hours a day. “I tried to write 5000 words or more every day, scrupulous in maintaining authenticity,” he later said.
Ben wanted to be a mainstream writer, but needed a way to finance himself between serious books, and so he became a paperback writer. Ben’s early pen names include Ben Elliott (his grandmother’s maiden name), who wrote Westerns for Ace; and Sam Webster, who wrote five books for Monarch. As Ken Barry he turned out racy paperback originals for Beacon with titles like The Love Itch and Executive Boudoir. But his agent was not happy about his decision to enter the western market, and suggested he represent himself on those sales. Ben had sent a trial novel to Harry Shorten of Tower Books. Ben’s family remembers it being A Hell of A Way to Die, written for Tower’s new Lassiter series. It was published in 1969, and editor Shorten told his new author to create a western series of his own. The result was Fargo.
The success of Fargo led to the Sundance series. Jim Sundance is a half-Cheyenne gunslinger who takes on the toughest jobs in order to raise funds to fight the corrupt Indian Ring back in Washington. The short-lived John Cutler series followed, and then perhaps Ben’s crowning achievement, the Rancho Bravo novels, published under the name Thorne Douglas.
Ben Haas died from a heart attack in New York City after attending a Literary Guild dinner in 1977. He was just fifty-one.
Fan favourite James Reasoner has hailed Ben as “one of the best action writers of all time”.
138 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1974
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 7, 2022
Silly macho heroics as Neal Fargo is asked by former President Teddy Roosevelt to travel down to Central America to prevent persons unknown from blowing up the Panama Canal.
Fargo endures a miles wide swath of flesh-eating army ants marching through the jungle to infiltrate a highly trained group of mercenaries under the leadership of an old nemesis.
Completely ridiculous Men’s Adventure nonsense which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Fargo endures a miles wide swath of flesh-eating army ants marching through the jungle to infiltrate a highly trained group of mercenaries under the leadership of an old nemesis.
Completely ridiculous Men’s Adventure nonsense which I thoroughly enjoyed.
June 27, 2020
Great book in a fun series, a western version of the Executioner with a lot less morality. In this on ol Teddy himself sent Fargo to Panama to protect the canal. Non stop action.
Highly recommend for western or men's adventure fans, works pretty well as either one. Though more mens adventure then a typical western.
Highly recommend for western or men's adventure fans, works pretty well as either one. Though more mens adventure then a typical western.
April 8, 2023
Might be the best pulp men’s adventure I’ve read. Appropriately ridiculous and surprisingly well-crafted.
December 8, 2022
Awesome, as good or better than the first Fargo book.
Definitely worth the read. I'll be starting the next Fargo soon.
Fast paced action, sexy women everything about this book was fun.
Definitely worth the read. I'll be starting the next Fargo soon.
Fast paced action, sexy women everything about this book was fun.
December 12, 2023
This was a quick burn through. After a brief introduction featuring Teddy Roosevelt, Fargo heads to Panama to prevent a massive international conspiracy and heist operation run by an old rival. There, he encounters every trope and stereotype of jungle warfare from big cats to army ants to hostile natives and poison blowdarts. The only one I can think of he didn't face was quicksand.
This is the pulp stuff of men's adventure, manly chest beating rough men doing adventurous and violent things, and every woman wants him (they are all, of course gorgeous and curvaceous). It all sounds stupid and tired.
But in Benteen's hands, its entertaining, exciting, and sometimes unpredictable. Our hero gets beat up really badly and is in serious danger for his life repeatedly, but manages to brave, muscle, and think his way out -- think Indiana Jones's best adventures, because those movies were based on exactly this kind of book.
Fargo continues to be a real bastard, but likable and interesting, even when he's brutal to accomplish a goal. Its interesting reading the old perspective on events and even equipment: he uses a butterfly knife (a big one) but its called a Batangas Knife. The bad guys get machine guns, called Chauchat (one of the early machine guns, a very crude, simple gun that jammed a lot). The setting is pretty well researched and nobody acts like a stereotype except the hot babes.
This is the pulp stuff of men's adventure, manly chest beating rough men doing adventurous and violent things, and every woman wants him (they are all, of course gorgeous and curvaceous). It all sounds stupid and tired.
But in Benteen's hands, its entertaining, exciting, and sometimes unpredictable. Our hero gets beat up really badly and is in serious danger for his life repeatedly, but manages to brave, muscle, and think his way out -- think Indiana Jones's best adventures, because those movies were based on exactly this kind of book.
Fargo continues to be a real bastard, but likable and interesting, even when he's brutal to accomplish a goal. Its interesting reading the old perspective on events and even equipment: he uses a butterfly knife (a big one) but its called a Batangas Knife. The bad guys get machine guns, called Chauchat (one of the early machine guns, a very crude, simple gun that jammed a lot). The setting is pretty well researched and nobody acts like a stereotype except the hot babes.
April 11, 2023
Fargo: Panama Gold was an enjoyable men’s adventure fiction novel, recommended to me by fellow genre fiction enthusiast, good friend, and fantasy author Howard Andrew Jones. “John Benteen” is one of several pseudonyms employed by the prolific Ben Haas, and with this book, he delivers a sharp, brisk, and bold tale of “men’s adventure,” a genre that sprang from the sweats, which were often themselves more modern (and less creatively fruitful) takes on the 1930s hero pulps (eg. The Spider, The Shadow, Doc Savage, The Avenger, The Skipper, etc.).
Many of the men’s adventure fiction books I’ve read purport to detail the exploits of competent and macho badasses, but the Remo Williams/Destroyer, Enforcer, Lone Wolf, The Liquidator, Death Merchant, and Mack Bolan/Executioner books I’ve read (among others) starred bumbling and/or foolhardy heroes who got shot all the time and had to be rescued by others, often lonesome, pretty women who would then nurse them back to health. Contrarily, the Fargo character in this book knows and can do many things and puts his knowledge and skills to good use, whether he finds himself in a knife fight or a card game or lost in the jungle. His attitudes and behavior actually reflect his experiences and expertise unlike the bullet magnets that run directly at flying lead (or dress up as an old woman like the Death Merchant did in his first book).
The requisite descriptions of assorted dalliances (and breasts) plants Panama Gold firmly in the late 1960s through 1980s output of men’s adventure fiction, which must have been influenced by the popularity of vigilante movies and James Bond, itself and lusty reimagining of the exceptionally well-plotted war paranoia hero pulp, Operator #5, the Frederick C. Davis stories of which are often top tier stuff. As was the case in those memorable stories, author Ben Haas created an uncommon, well-researched, and (possibly) implementable bad guy plan for this book—the one herein threatens the Panama Canal (under construction at the time this story takes place). Our hero Neal Fargo is tasked by a retired President whose initials are T.R. to investigate this situation, and finds himself confronted by local toughs, insatiable women, Central American Indians, sadistic mutineers, flying insects, an obstinate horse, piranhas, and driver ants. Haas delivers quite a few memorable set pieces using these assorted elements…
The toughness missing from many men's adventure fiction tales can be found in this book as well as brains, a clever villainous scheme, and several unusually tense sequences of suspense. By the time I had finished reading, I had purchased several more by this author, who wrote westerns and fantasy as well. Fargo Panama Gold is not as bizarre as TNT and David Alexander's Phoenix, nor as nasty and nihilistic as the Ganon trilogy, Bronson: Blind Rage, and DeMille's Ryker books, but it is a crisp, well-plotted, and hard-edged adventure starring a convincing and competent badass.
Many of the men’s adventure fiction books I’ve read purport to detail the exploits of competent and macho badasses, but the Remo Williams/Destroyer, Enforcer, Lone Wolf, The Liquidator, Death Merchant, and Mack Bolan/Executioner books I’ve read (among others) starred bumbling and/or foolhardy heroes who got shot all the time and had to be rescued by others, often lonesome, pretty women who would then nurse them back to health. Contrarily, the Fargo character in this book knows and can do many things and puts his knowledge and skills to good use, whether he finds himself in a knife fight or a card game or lost in the jungle. His attitudes and behavior actually reflect his experiences and expertise unlike the bullet magnets that run directly at flying lead (or dress up as an old woman like the Death Merchant did in his first book).
The requisite descriptions of assorted dalliances (and breasts) plants Panama Gold firmly in the late 1960s through 1980s output of men’s adventure fiction, which must have been influenced by the popularity of vigilante movies and James Bond, itself and lusty reimagining of the exceptionally well-plotted war paranoia hero pulp, Operator #5, the Frederick C. Davis stories of which are often top tier stuff. As was the case in those memorable stories, author Ben Haas created an uncommon, well-researched, and (possibly) implementable bad guy plan for this book—the one herein threatens the Panama Canal (under construction at the time this story takes place). Our hero Neal Fargo is tasked by a retired President whose initials are T.R. to investigate this situation, and finds himself confronted by local toughs, insatiable women, Central American Indians, sadistic mutineers, flying insects, an obstinate horse, piranhas, and driver ants. Haas delivers quite a few memorable set pieces using these assorted elements…
The toughness missing from many men's adventure fiction tales can be found in this book as well as brains, a clever villainous scheme, and several unusually tense sequences of suspense. By the time I had finished reading, I had purchased several more by this author, who wrote westerns and fantasy as well. Fargo Panama Gold is not as bizarre as TNT and David Alexander's Phoenix, nor as nasty and nihilistic as the Ganon trilogy, Bronson: Blind Rage, and DeMille's Ryker books, but it is a crisp, well-plotted, and hard-edged adventure starring a convincing and competent badass.
June 14, 2021
Panama Hell
Good story, could very well have occured, its as if history of world power historically followed Benteen's take in this story! So many occurence's continued into history!
Good story, could very well have occured, its as if history of world power historically followed Benteen's take in this story! So many occurence's continued into history!
March 29, 2024
Just a fast adventure of impossible odds. I have enjoyed the first two in series, will continue the journey every six months or so.
December 11, 2020
Great book
September 18, 2016
Mediocre, but fun and fast paced
For what it is (the continuing adventures of a knockoff of Lee Marvin's character from The Professionals) it's a quick and engaging read, just hard to call it good. Like the Captain Gringo "Renegade" series, it's setting in the early 20th century is really what distinguishes it from other men's adventure series. Still, for $2, I'm sure I'll keep reading.
For what it is (the continuing adventures of a knockoff of Lee Marvin's character from The Professionals) it's a quick and engaging read, just hard to call it good. Like the Captain Gringo "Renegade" series, it's setting in the early 20th century is really what distinguishes it from other men's adventure series. Still, for $2, I'm sure I'll keep reading.
November 11, 2008
Fargo goes on a mission for Teddy Roosevelt to save the Panama Canal construction.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews