This review is part of Barrie Summy's Book Review Club.
Sudden
Oliver Strange
Historical data
published bY Corgi books
First published 1933
This edition published 1965
Cover price 3/6
James Green, otherwise known as Sudden, is wanted in Texas for crimes he didn't commit and when he is given the chance by Governor Bleke to work for the law he jumps at it with both guns b
lazing.Sudden is riding to the town of Windy when he comes across an ambush. He has to hide himself behind some rocks and when he comes out he find one man murdered while his killers have already fled. Sudden takes the dead man into town and find himself smack bang in the middle of a range war.
The Sudden series which were continued by Fred Nolan, friend of The Archive and Billy the Kid Expert, are all traditional westerns and this, the first in the series, was written when the genre was still young and the last dust clouds of the Old West had yet to drift onto the far horizon.
The plotting and pace has been copied a million times since this classic was first published and its difficult for the modern reader to appreciate how fresh and exciting the book must have been on original publication.
That said the Sudden series are well worth rooting around for if you like traditional westerns with a good no nonsense and likable hero.
10 comments:
There's something to be said for these original publications, isn't there? :)
I like an old western on occassion. Thanks for the tip. If you have time, stop by to read my book review thanks :P
That's always the problem, isn't it? Realizing that someone invented these so-called conventions once upon a time and crediting him/her for it. Christie comes in for a lot of criticism now, but she was the inventor of much.
HOw did I miss this series?
I love this series and have all the books. Some people criticise the books by Fredrick.H.Christian who continued the series but I love them all. I consider myself immensley lucky for finding this set of books. I tried reading other westerns by other authors but did not like any as much as I liked these. I hope these will be republished again so more people can read them. I do know that they will not be published again as they are supposed to be racist, but I find that the spirit of the writer is definitely not racist.Only a superficial reading will give the impression that these books are racist.
I love this series and have all the books. Some people criticise the books by Fredrick.H.Christian who continued the series but I love them all. I consider myself immensley lucky for finding this set of books. I tried reading other westerns by other authors but did not like any as much as I liked these. I hope these will be republished again so more people can read them. I do know that they will not be published again as they are supposed to be racist, but I find that the spirit of the writer is definitely not racist.Only a superficial reading will give the impression that these books are racist.
I have been a Sudden fan since the age of 9 & I have almost all the series. Sudden is the kind of hero you never grow out of - he's tough and has to face the worst of situations but he always comes up trumps & lives by a very definite code of values. He's an outlaw yet every inch a gentleman & noone can beat him to the draw (though Wild Bill Hickock matches his speed in one memorable encounter) . Although some stories & situations did overlap, every new Sudden book was manna for ravenous addicts like me & there were atleast 10 totally different storylines. Atleast 2 unforgettable villains in Rogue & King Burdette, & the Mexican bandit in Marshal of Lawless (I'm looking for a copy), a totally different story in Rides Again what with Hell City & all.To do him credit Frederick H. Christian (whose sequels Oliver Strange fans made it a point to disparage) introduced 2 perfectly new plots in Apachefighter & Dead Or Alive. The last was the greyest of the Suddens - Noreen was dead, 'the little hellion'(nothing wrong with that young fella's lungs) was a motherless toddler.Something went wrong in Oliver Strange's world & the Sudden of the best Western series ever suddenly bowed out of our lives.Not even Frederick H C's were forthcoming , Sudden disappeared from the bookshelves & I was left scouting the secondhand bookshops at the Metros for the few Suddens I still don't have. Rumours abound - Sudden's son features as a hero in a series but I never saw hair nor hide of such a book, Sudden was semi-autobiographical for Oliver Strange ( he dedicated one book to his own wife 'Noreen')but I'm still scouting the net for little nuggets of info about Sudden, the hero of my girlhood.
I have been a Sudden fan since the age of 9 & I have almost all the series. Sudden is the kind of hero you never grow out of - he's tough and has to face the worst of situations but he always comes up trumps & lives by a very definite code of values. He's an outlaw yet every inch a gentleman & noone can beat him to the draw (though Wild Bill Hickock matches his speed in one memorable encounter) . Although some stories & situations did overlap, every new Sudden book was manna for ravenous addicts like me & there were atleast 10 totally different storylines. Atleast 2 unforgettable villains in Rogue & King Burdette, & the Mexican bandit in Marshal of Lawless (I'm looking for a copy), a totally different story in Rides Again what with Hell City & all.To do him credit Frederick H. Christian (whose sequels Oliver Strange fans made it a point to disparage) introduced 2 perfectly new plots in Apachefighter & Dead Or Alive. The last was the greyest of the Suddens - Noreen was dead, 'the little hellion'(nothing wrong with that young fella's lungs) was a motherless toddler.Something went wrong in Oliver Strange's world & the Sudden of the best Western series ever suddenly bowed out of our lives.Not even Frederick H C's were forthcoming , Sudden disappeared from the bookshelves & I was left scouting the secondhand bookshops at the Metros for the few Suddens I still don't have. Rumours abound - Sudden's son features as a hero in a series but I never saw hair nor hide of such a book, Sudden was semi-autobiographical for Oliver Strange ( he dedicated one book to his own wife 'Noreen')but I'm still scouting the net for little nuggets of info about Sudden, the hero of my girlhood.
I have been a Sudden fan since the age of 9 & I have almost all the series. Sudden is the kind of hero you never grow out of - he's tough and has to face the worst of situations but he always comes up trumps & lives by a very definite code of values. He's an outlaw yet every inch a gentleman & noone can beat him to the draw (though Wild Bill Hickock matches his speed in one memorable encounter) . Although some stories & situations did overlap, every new Sudden book was manna for ravenous addicts like me & there were atleast 10 totally different storylines. Atleast 2 unforgettable villains in Rogue & King Burdette, & the Mexican bandit in Marshal of Lawless (I'm looking for a copy), a totally different story in Rides Again what with Hell City & all.To do him credit Frederick H. Christian (whose sequels Oliver Strange fans made it a point to disparage) introduced 2 perfectly new plots in Apachefighter & Dead Or Alive. The last was the greyest of the Suddens - Noreen was dead, 'the little hellion'(nothing wrong with that young fella's lungs) was a motherless toddler.Something went wrong in Oliver Strange's world & the Sudden of the best Western series ever suddenly bowed out of our lives.Not even Frederick H C's were forthcoming , Sudden disappeared from the bookshelves & I was left scouting the secondhand bookshops at the Metros for the few Suddens I still don't have. Rumours abound - Sudden's son features as a hero in a series but I never saw hair nor hide of such a book, Sudden was semi-autobiographical for Oliver Strange ( he dedicated one book to his own wife 'Noreen')but I'm still scouting the net for little nuggets of info about Sudden, the hero of my girlhood.
I read these books 40 years ago as a kid, and at the time I found them good adventure stories. There was racism, but growing up in India it was all too outside my experience for me to care.
I re-read them a few years ago after living in the west for 30+ years, and I no longer think the same. The books are extremely racist, with both overt and subtle racism. The "good" black guys are Uncle Tom caricatures of the inoffensive servant type who is "good" in that he knows his place in society and has no ambition to go beyond. Non-white people are repeatedly characterized by their physical traits: "wooly pated negro", "yellow dog" and "greaser" (in reference to Mexicans), "red devil", "chink", etc. The highest praise Sudden (and others in his stories) can offer is that someone is "white" or "acted white".
I was reading "Marshal of Lawless" the other day, and was struck by how opposed Oliver Strange was to the idea of a non-white male courting a white woman. The Mexican "El Diablo" gets whipped and has his clothes shot off him by Sudden for daring to approach a white girl. The girl herself has no problem calling him a "yellow dog" and threatening to have her range-hands whip him. The chief villain has a white father but an Indian mother, which also makes it unthinkable that a white woman would ever let herself be soiled by his attentions. There is so much casual racism coming out the mouths of both the good and bad guys in the book, it just makes it somewhat distracting to read.
I am not exactly what anyone would call politically correct, but I do dislike racial prejudice. I can take it as a joke or simply a historical fact without being offended, but when it is thrown around as gratuitously and freely as in these books, it sort of distracts against the enjoyment of the books.
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