Sagebrush Sleuth

Waco #2

by J.T. Edson

Things were bad in Arizona when the Rangers were formed. Killers, hold-up gangs and rustlers were overrunning the state and getting away with it … and all because there were no real lawmen to bring them to justice. So when cattle boss Bertram Mosehan decided to form the Rangers, he was looking for a special breed of man. Tough. Tenacious. Incorruptible. And handy with a gun. Two Texans seemed to fit the bill perfectly. One of them looked like a dude, but no one was fooled. No one, that is, who knew his name to be Doc Leroy. The other was a young cowboy who wore his guns in a way significant to anyone who knew a fast and dangerous gunfighter when he saw one. Waco was his name. ABOUT THE AUTHOR John Thomas Edson was born at Worksop, Nottinghamshire, on February 17 1928, the son of a miner who was killed in an accident when John was nine. He left Shirebrook Selective Central School at 14 to work in a stone quarry and joined the Army four years later. As a sergeant in the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, Edson served in Kenya during the Emergency, on one occasion killing five Mau Mau on patrol. He started writing in Hong Kong, and when he won a large cash prize in a tombola he invested in a typewriter. On coming out of the Army after 12 years with a wife and children to support, Edson learned his craft while running a fish-and-chip shop and working on the production line at a local pet food factory. His efforts paid off when Trail Boss (1961) won second prize in a competition with a promise of publication and an outright payment of £50. The publishers offered £25 more for each subsequent book, and with the addition of earnings from serial-writing for the comic Victor, Edson was able to settle down to professional authorship. When the comic's owners decided that nobody read cowboy stories any more, he was forced to get a job as a postman (the job had the by-product of enabling him to lose six stone in weight from his original 18). Edson's prospects improved when Corgi Books took over his publisher, encouraged him to produce seven books a year and promised him royalties for the first time. In 1974 he made his first visit to the United States, to which he was to return regularly in search of reference books. He declared that he had no desire to live in the Wild West, "I've never even been on a horse. I've seen those things, and they look highly dangerous at both ends and bloody uncomfortable in the middle. My only contact was to shoot them for dog meat." His heroes were often based on his favourite film stars, so that Dusty Fog resembled Audie Murphy, and the Ysabel Kid was an amalgam of Elvis Presley in Flaming Star and Jack Buetel in The Outlaw. Before becoming a recluse in his last years, JT's favourite boast was that Melton Mowbray was famous for three "The pie, Stilton cheese and myself but not necessarily in that order."

Genres: Westerns

141 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 5, 1977

About the author

John Thomas Edson is an English writer of Westerns.

He was born in 1928.He was obsessed with Westerns from an early age and often "rewrote" cowboy movies that he had seen at the cinema. One thing that always intrigued him was the minutiae—how did the baddie's gun jam? What were the mechanics of cheating at cards? How did Westerners really dress and speak?

His writing was helped to develop by a schoolteacher who encouraged him. Now lives in Leicester, Leicestershire.[citation needed]

During his 20s and 30s, Edson served in His Majesty's Armed Forces for 12 years as a Dog Trainer. Cooped up in barracks for long periods, he devoured books by the great escapist writers (Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert McCraig, Nelson C. Nye and Edgar Wallace). He also sat through hours of movies starring John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Errol Flynn and his all-time favourite, Audie Murphy.

His first appearance in print was "Hints On Self-Preservation when attacked by a War Dog" in the Osnabrück camp magazine Shufti in 1947. Acquiring a typewriter in the early 1950s and putting it to good use while posted to Hong Kong, by the time of his discharge he had written 10 Westerns, an early version of Bunduki and the first of the short detective-type stories starring Waco.

Upon leaving HM forces, JT won second prize (with Trail Boss) in the Western division of a Literary Competition run by Brown & Watson Ltd, which led to the publication of 46 novels with them, becoming a major earner for the company.

He had the need for supplementary income from time-to-time and also served as a postman, and the proprietor of a fish 'n' chip shop. Furthermore, he branched out as a writer and wrote five series of short stories (Dan Hollick, Dog Handler) for the Victor boys papers, and wrote the "box captions" for comic strips, which instilled discipline and the ability to convey maximum information with minimum words.


His writing career forged ahead when he joined Corgi Books in the late '60s, which gave JT exposure through a major publishing house, as well as the opportunity to branch out from the core Westerns into the Rockabye County, the science-fiction hero Bunduki and other series.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._T._Edson

Reviews

[Dirk Grobbelaar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Edson as a young'un and reading this it was easy to see why. Nothing overly complicated here, just straightforward and full of fun.

Sagebrush Sleuth reads a little bit like a short-story collection, as the protagonists traverse an assortment of scenarios (cases), dealing with everything from bandits to typhoid fever.

It seems to me that Edson was following the Bar-2o formula of Clarence Edward Mulford. The Floating Outfit, much like the Bar-20, contains a number of notable characters who feature in interconnected adventures. In this outing, the two mainly occurring characters are Waco and Doc Leroy.

Don't take this too serious, it's just fun, fun, fun!

3.5 stars - rounded up.

[C K · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a classic Western novella, so that is really going to skew your perception - it is a fairly polarizing genre.

That being that case, I believe that it is an excellent example of "invincible, perfect Western hero" fiction. There are some simple mysteries for the main character to solve and the reader will likely feel clever as they figure out the solutions with or before the main character.

It is formulaic, but it is sometimes nice to just shutdown the critical-thinking portion of your brain and just be entertained.

Hate it if you like.

[Barbara Lee Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE WATCHFUL EYES👀👀

Great stories of the mental as well physical strength these men endured and use throughout their Ranger assignments. Each adventuresome plot is different and so are the characters involved.
The rhythm of these stories is never broken with each story...Keep your campfires low..never know whose watching...

[larry brashear · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding!

I simply love these books and this author. This writer does a fine job of editing the work. The story is interesting and exciting from start to finish.

[Jacquie · Rating 5 out of 5]

As with most of the Arizona Ranger books, this is a collection of short stories about the adventures of Waco and Doc Leroy. The first story was later expanded into Waco's Badge and many of the elements in this original shorter version do not make much sense. A band of outlaws led by a woman impersonating Belle Starr are robbing stagecoaches and the newly formed Arizona Rangers set out to capture them. In this story Waco appears not to have met Belle Starr before (when in fact their first meeting is told in the Mulrooney books) and he and Doc were working for Captain Mosehan's ranch before he was asked to form the rangers.
During the second story Waco steps in to prevent a wagon train full of dudes from hanging an Apache scout. Using his soon to be legendary deductive skills Waco exposes the true killer. In the third story the hero is actually a 'mean looking man' whom everyone misjudges until he foils a bank heist. Waco and Doc Leroy are on hand to help the town learn an important lesson about appearances. The fourth story sees Waco helping a fellow former CA rider protect his new boss who made the mistake of killing a fast gun. By proving himself to be faster than the hapless rancher Waco shifts the attention of the hired guns, as well as the outlaw Johnny Ringo, onto himself. Doc Leroy's medical skills are crucial in the fifth story as he tries to contain a typhoid outbreak with the help of Waco, outlaw Curly Bill Brocious and the man the Pinkertons sent the rangers to arrest. Waco's detective work is showcased further in the sixth story as he exonerates a young rancher accused of shooting someone in the back. The seventh and final story sees the rangers, especially Waco, helping a school teacher who's being bullied by a romantic rival. When the teacher reaches his breaking point, Waco reveals some of his life before meeting Dusty Fog (told in Trigger Fast) and urges him to remain the kind of role model that he once needed.