What do you think?
Rate this book
Waco #5
The Drifter
When Waco moseys into Two Forks, Utah, he orders up more than the cowhand special. What he gets for his two bits is a double dose of fast-shooting trouble. Five of the meanest toughs to ever saddle a stool at the Twin Bridge Saloon are hell-bent on pumping lead into Waco's hide. And a few well-aimed slugs teach them that the quick-drawing Texan is the wrong man to tangle with.
Obliging a passel of no-account gunslingers with a shooting lesson is only a start to the troubles waiting for Waco in Two Forks. Aiming to rid the lawless town of every pistol-packing varmint, Waco fixes to pin on a sheriff's tin star. But first he's gotta face a rattlesnake of a rival whose venom has already sent one sheriff to his grave...
John Thomas Edson (February 17 1928, died July 17 2014 ) JT Edson was a former British Army dog-handler who wrote more than 130 Western novels, accounting for some 27 million sales in paperback.
Edson's works - produced on a word processor in an Edwardian semi at Melton Mowbray - contain clear, crisp action in the traditions of B-movies and Western television series. What they lack in psychological depth is made up for by at least 12 good fights per volume . Each portrays a vivid, idealised "West That Never Was", at a pace that rarely slackens.
His authentic descriptions of 19th-century weapons, his interest in what causes a gun to jam and in the mechanics of cheating at cards enjoyed a strong following, especially among serving British soldiers. But his accounts of catfights involving women punching, scratching and biting as they tear the clothes off each other in the mud, did not appeal to the new breed of feminist publishing executives. Others pointed out that a young man sent to Broadmoor for killing a Sunday School teacher claimed to have modelled himself on Edson's hero, the half-Comanche, half-Irish Ysabel Kid. There was also the novel The Hooded Riders (1968), which portrayed an organisation resembling the Ku Klux Klan as a heroic resistance group.
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, adding: "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."
Obliging a passel of no-account gunslingers with a shooting lesson is only a start to the troubles waiting for Waco in Two Forks. Aiming to rid the lawless town of every pistol-packing varmint, Waco fixes to pin on a sheriff's tin star. But first he's gotta face a rattlesnake of a rival whose venom has already sent one sheriff to his grave...
John Thomas Edson (February 17 1928, died July 17 2014 ) JT Edson was a former British Army dog-handler who wrote more than 130 Western novels, accounting for some 27 million sales in paperback.
Edson's works - produced on a word processor in an Edwardian semi at Melton Mowbray - contain clear, crisp action in the traditions of B-movies and Western television series. What they lack in psychological depth is made up for by at least 12 good fights per volume . Each portrays a vivid, idealised "West That Never Was", at a pace that rarely slackens.
His authentic descriptions of 19th-century weapons, his interest in what causes a gun to jam and in the mechanics of cheating at cards enjoyed a strong following, especially among serving British soldiers. But his accounts of catfights involving women punching, scratching and biting as they tear the clothes off each other in the mud, did not appeal to the new breed of feminist publishing executives. Others pointed out that a young man sent to Broadmoor for killing a Sunday School teacher claimed to have modelled himself on Edson's hero, the half-Comanche, half-Irish Ysabel Kid. There was also the novel The Hooded Riders (1968), which portrayed an organisation resembling the Ku Klux Klan as a heroic resistance group.
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, adding: "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."
- GenresWesterns
188 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 1, 1968
33 people are currently reading
107 people want to read
About the author
J.T. Edson
183 books79 followersJohn 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
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
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 18, 2018
The literary equivalent of the Saturday morning cinema I went to as a kid. Just as enjoyable as when I first read it forty-odd years ago, if not more so.
July 13, 2018
DRIFTER SMITH AKA WACO
Waco and his buddies led by Dusty Fog, one of the Confederates leading military men. Lively story peppered with a lot folk lore. The English that was spoken Lordy, those people broke up, separated dropped vowels or they invented new words. The author picked the flavor and it carried throughout the story. I hope that he finds another descriptive avenue to follow his characters, for instance his descriptions of the Dusty Fog members mainly the Ysabel Kid whose ethnicity is described as the joining of a wild Irish man who hailed from Kentucky and his mother's who was Cajun/Comanche...then the Kid is described as a dark Comanche Dog Solder...that's not necessary to write...Cajuns have a multi-ethnic background, everyone knows that..We all know Native Americans skin tone varies, but they are dark we all know that...his horse's name the
"N...word" you can do better than that J.T. Edison..every time I came across these descriptive words it took away from the book. The Kid is a member of this crew, why belittle him..Not nice. These men are all strong personalities individually, but as a team they are men to ride the river with...maybe you'll read this review, I hope you think about what I wrote.p
Waco and his buddies led by Dusty Fog, one of the Confederates leading military men. Lively story peppered with a lot folk lore. The English that was spoken Lordy, those people broke up, separated dropped vowels or they invented new words. The author picked the flavor and it carried throughout the story. I hope that he finds another descriptive avenue to follow his characters, for instance his descriptions of the Dusty Fog members mainly the Ysabel Kid whose ethnicity is described as the joining of a wild Irish man who hailed from Kentucky and his mother's who was Cajun/Comanche...then the Kid is described as a dark Comanche Dog Solder...that's not necessary to write...Cajuns have a multi-ethnic background, everyone knows that..We all know Native Americans skin tone varies, but they are dark we all know that...his horse's name the
"N...word" you can do better than that J.T. Edison..every time I came across these descriptive words it took away from the book. The Kid is a member of this crew, why belittle him..Not nice. These men are all strong personalities individually, but as a team they are men to ride the river with...maybe you'll read this review, I hope you think about what I wrote.p
February 22, 2018
Wonderful!
This is an interesting and exciting tale of the old west including romance and good winning over once again. This is an excellent author!
This is an interesting and exciting tale of the old west including romance and good winning over once again. This is an excellent author!
January 4, 2019
,JTE at his best
A classic description of every schoolboys idea of the west. Fast moving, fast guns, good against evil! An excellent read.
A classic description of every schoolboys idea of the west. Fast moving, fast guns, good against evil! An excellent read.
August 9, 2014
Waco and Doc leroy have had to leave the Arizona Rangers because of their lenient treatment of Curly Bill Brocius. They have gone there separate ways when Waco arrives in an isolated town. Here the local saloon keeper, a german is intent on becoming sherrif and arranges crimes for himself to solve. Waco thwarts his plans and is elected sherrif, unfortunately he is shot in the head and loses his memory.
In the end the floating outfit arrive in town to help just as his memory returns and he solves the case.
In the end the floating outfit arrive in town to help just as his memory returns and he solves the case.
November 14, 2019
Another phenomenal western from j t edson. The floating outfit (dusty fog and gang) never fails to entertain
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews