hive recently revealed that Ed Mcbain had written a western under the Evan Hunter name. And it got me thinking of how many writers, best known as crime/mystery writers have dabbled with westerns.Elmore Leonard of course started out as a western writer, and Robert Parker is currently producing westerns. And what of Tony Hillerman who wrote a hybrid of mystery and western with his Tribal Policemen series. Bill Crider is another who straddles both genres and James Reasoner continues to work in both genres. And then there's Black Horse Western writer, Chap O'keefe who used the Sherlock Holmes story, Valley of Fear as an inspiration for the excellent western Blast to Oblivion. George Gilman of Edge fame started out writing Chandleresque thrillers and I myself write westerns under the Jack Martin name and as Gary Dobbs I am currently working on revisions of a crime/mystery novel.
And there's more, many more.
"Down this mean range a man must ride, a man who himself is neither mean nor tarnished, but has a gun, a tin star and some chewy tobacco. Yehaw!"
The genres have much in common - detective = sheriff. After all what was Wyatt Earp but a frontier law-man? And Billy the Kid could have stepped from the pages of an Elmore Leonard. And speaking of old Earp the excellent Black Hats by Patrick Culhane (Max Allen Collins) features an elderly Wyatt Earp as a private
detective tangling with the likes of Al Capone. Then there's thriller writer Alistair Maclean who gave us a western with Breakheart Pass. Joe Lansdale is another man who has mastered both genres, not to mention a great many more.This has got me to wondering just how many writers best known for crime have worked in the western genre and I'm sure Archive readers can help me in compiling a list. How about it - anyone know of any more multi genre scribes?
And anyone interested in exploring the link between crime and the western, I direct them to the excellent Black Horse Extra article, Can a western be Noir? And Bill Crider's article, Sleuths in Spurs list a great many writers who have hopped from one genre to the other and lists five essential mystery/western hybrid novels.
3 comments:
How about Louis L'Amour? Started writing crime and adventure fiction, then moved to westerns.
To be even more apposite, Gary, you could point to another Black Horse Extra article, "Detectives in Cowboy Boots". That one is here:
http://blackhorsewesterns.com/bhe5
Actually, I don't think any post or article can even begin to scratch the surface of the subject. A complete roll call of famous author crossovers (western to crime or vice versa) would fill a book of its own.
Richard Matheson who wrote I Am Legend among other classic sci-fi, horror, and fantasy novels, also penned Journal of The Gun Years and the excellent By The Gun anthology.
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