THE COMPLETE EDGE - 1: The Loner

Edge, the loner is a new kind of western. Edge is a new kind of western hero.

I’ve written plenty about my admiration for the Edge series of books but it’s that time again, the urge to re-read the books is too strong to ignore and so expect the odd Edge review/article to pop up from time to time. You never know maybe in a year or two the Archive will be a useful resource for info on the series – I do intend to look at all the books once more and there were 61 of those things. I have most of them and will hopefully be able to fill in the gaps. So I figure it’ll take some time. And thus – drum roll please – we have the first in an occasional series that will take in the entire Edge canon. Or at least those I can get my hands on.

The books. Heavily influenced by the spaghetti westerns, were adult westerns and very much aimed at the mature reader but as a kid these were my favourite books of all. They had a large readership around the school playground; dog-eared copies would be swapped until they were falling apart. We didn’t have Harry Potter when we were kids, we wouldn’t have given the wizard the time of day in any case. What we had was much better – we had the ultra violent and deeply satirical, Edge.

“Jamie Hedges counted six riders when there should have only been one. But Joe was surely among them and so he didn’t worry for he would willingly shout aloud his happiness to the whole re-united USA.”

I adore these books, I’ve had a love affair with these books that has gone on for well over thirty years. And these days I count the author, George Gilman (real name Terry Harknett) as one of my cyber friends and from chats with him it is clear that even he underestimates the importance of the series – he seems to regard them as throwaway fictions and only ever looked upon them as a job of work. However the first book was published in 1971, the last in 1989 and yet the books still have a huge and fervent fan base. A damn good job of work, indeed.

Could anything truly throwaway last so long and still delight readers to the current day?

I think not.

Edge is a wonderful and skilfully written series – definitely among the most important of the British westerns.

The opening chapter is extremely violent, something the author himself was never truly comfortable with, but the publishers, having a solid view on the audience they wanted to attract, insisted on the extreme violence. The series would be aimed at fans of the spaghetti westerns that graced the cinemas at the time and many of these featured intense, though stylised violence. The type of things that these days the likes of Quentin Tarantino are praised for.

Jamie, a cripple, watches the riders approach and his heart sinks when he realises his brother Joe (Josiah) is not amongst them. The leader of the riders is a brutal looking man called Frank Forest who has served with Jamie’s brother during the Civil war. Forrest tells Jamie that his brother was shot and killed and that he died owing a gambling debt. Forrest knows Joe has been sending money home and he claims that the dying Captain told him to collect the money from his younger brother at their Iowa farm.

Jamie figures the men are lying and he refuses to tell them where the money is, claiming it is safe in the bank. What follows is a brutal scene, which ends with the men riding out penniless – behind them they have left the boy and one of their own dead and the farm on fire.

Then the man who will become known as Edge is introduced – it is a masterful introduction. We discover that he killed fifty-six men during the war, something that often troubles him, but it is obvious that the tally will increase pretty darn soon.

“Josiah Hedges was thirty years old, stood six feet three inches tall and weighed a solid one hundred and ninety pounds, some of it bone, most of it muscle. Many women considered him handsome, many others thought him ugly: he had that kind of face.”

We discover that it was actually he who had crippled his brother by accident while playing around with their pa’s gun. When he finds his brother dead he is torn apart inside and whatever good he may have carried is replaced by an evil thirst for vengeance. He recognised the dead man Forrest left behind and from this he knows the men responsible for all this. He buries his brother and sets out in search of revenge.

A new kind of western hero is born – and right from the off the series would be different than anything else. The books were even presented differently and Edge was one of those rare westerns that didn’t feature the character wearing a Stetson or other such western hat on the cover.

The west of the Edge series are populated by grotesques - grand guigol westerns you could say. The first folk Edge bumps into are a sex obsessed bogus preacher and his half Sioux woman – a woman the preacher claims to be his sister. By the end of the chapter Edge has eaten their food and killed the man, left the woman unconscious and stolen the padre outfit – but not before being attacked, mind.

However Edge is now less than a man, he is a cold blooded killing machine and during his next confrontation a Mexican mishears his name and calls him Edge which is the name he will now adopt – Joshia Hedges is dead.

Long live Edge.

Each chapter ends on something of a high point and Edge is soon thrown in jail before being busted free by the Brady Gang who had intended to free one of their own gang but blew the wrong cell. Edge rescues their man and is now forced to run with the gang and becomes an outlaw. Before he leaves though he carves the word, GRINGO into the sheriff’s forehead all because the lawman kept referring to him as, Mex. He later rides back into town for the sake of five dollars the sheriff took from him to pay for his meal. Edge figures that has he was in jail, and a guest of the town then the cost of feeding him should fall to the town. He risks his life for the sake of five bucks, which is an example of the air of inspired absurdity that runs through the series. Edge is not meant to be realistic – Edge is larger than life.

As the book moves on the pace picks up tremendously and every page offers considerable excitement. This first novel doesn’t contain too many of the one-liners that the series would become known for but it does offer a great introduction to a new kind of western hero. Everything is thrown into the mix – gunfights galore, a little sexual suggestion, an Apache attack and the blistering showdown.

Is it great writing – fucking right it is. The books were written to entertain and that they did wonderfully, indeed continue to do – surely the sign of great writing.