American Westerns discussion

The winner of the American Westerns December 2017 Group Read poll “Selections from Bobby Underwood” is THE LEGEND OF CALEB YORK by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins. Spillane was one of the most crime popular writers of the 20th century selling tens of millions of book, many starring hard-boiled PI Mike Hammer. Max Allan Collins was chosen to complete Spillane’s unfinished works. This novel is based on a screenplay that was never filmed.

I like that it's dedicated "For Bill Crider - best of the West".

Edwin wrote: "I like that it's dedicated "For Bill Crider - best of the West"."

So cool, that it is dedicated to him.

I was half expecting Mike Hammer in the Wild West, but this is far better. Caleb York is a much different character, more like Shane than Hammer. Spillane always had the chops for storytelling and colorful dialogue, and I think that Max Allan Collins did a marvelous job tightening up the narrative and the plotting to produce a novel that is more than the sum of it's parts. The hard-boiled Westerns of the 50s and 60s are one of my favorite eras for fiction, and this novel fits in well with the best of them.

I was pleasantly surprised by this one, and wouldn’t it be nice if other westerns written by Spillane were discovered and Collins completed them? Definitely would make a nice western film.