Terry Harknett

I generally drop western legend, Terry Harknett AKA George G. Gilman, writer of among others, the classic Edge series of westerns, an email every so often and usually get a prompt reply. However my last few emails went unanswered and I was dismayed to find that Terry, now 80 years of age, is living in a care home in Dorset. He celebrated his 80th Birthday at the home just before Christmas last. He marked the occasion with a special white chocolate birthday cake, golden balloon and a party which he shared with his friends and staff at the 29 bedroomed, Grade II listed Victorian manor house.

Terry's work, especially his Edge series is still widely read and I am honoured to have been involved in getting the first Edge novel into digital print, before fellow western fan Malcolm Davy took over the digital transition of the ancient texts. Terry and I would pass emails back and forth and Terry often read the Archive, several times sending me private messages on articles that graced these digital pages.

The first time Edge ever saw digital print with an introcution by myself

I, and I'm sure all fans, would like to send their very best wishes to Mr Harknett...a true legend of western literature.

Below I have reposted an interview with the great man which was originally published on the Archive back in 2008 -

The US publisher called the Edge series, "The most violent westerns in the world."

And they were but it was stylised violence, Grand-Guignol violence, written by an author who didn't much like violence but managed to tune into what the western reading public wanted.

"I was worried about the amount of graphic violence I was asked to put in the Gilman books and it was a cold blooded decision (pun intended) by me to counter-balence this with humour. Fortunately my publishers and later the reading public didn't seem to mind even though some of the jokes were very anachronistic that tended to ruin whatever degree of realism I had manged to convey in the narrative."


The humour certainly became a big part of the series. And perhaps that's what made them stand out from the other Oater-Nasties in the bookshops, maybe it was this often surreal humor that makes the series so evergreen. The series ended in 1989 and the books are not in print but there is still an huge demand. At the time of writing there is a copy of Edge no 60 on Ebay and it's currently been bid upto £31. Not bad for a cheap paperback.

Besides the Edge books George G. Gilman, real name Terry Harknett, created Adam Steele (there are 49 books featuring this character) as well as other lesser series characters and was responsible for the Fistful of Dollars novelisation under the name Frank Chandler.


"My first published books were hardback mysteries for Robert Hale featuring a London private eye called Stephen Wayne. And later I wrote several crime novels for a handful of paperback and hardback publishers. But it was Edge that eventually allowed me to become a full time writer."


Terry was born in Essex in 1936 to a working class background. He went to a secondary modern school and was a very practical boy, developing an interest in mechanics.

"After my initial boyhood ambition to become a motor mechanic was dashed by a school career visit to the Ford Motor Company factory in Dagenham - I was born only a few miles away. I decided I wanted to be a mystery writer instead."

Motor mechanics to mystery hack is quite a radical turn around. Can't quite see the connection there somehow but for Terry it made perfect sense. The motor industry's loss is the reading publics gain.


"I was always painfully shy as a kid, still am in many ways. In fact I still have a phobia about being the centre of attention. I wanted to be rich and, as a fifteen year old, it seemed to me that only those born with a silver spoon in their mouths or famous people in the public eye got to be rich. There was once exception - writers, who could beaver away in their lonely studies writing books that would bring them wealth - some of them, anyway. And since my favourite reading matter was American hard boiled crime fiction this was the genre I would make my fortune working in."


Only in life, as I'm sure Edge pointed out somewhere in his laconic drawl, things never quite work out as planned. Terry's first job was as a copy boy with The Reuters News Agency. He stuck at this for nine months and then he went across to Fleet Street and got a post in a features syndicate agency. Here his duties was buying articles, crossword and strip cartoons and then flogging them onto various markets. It was here that Terry started writing short stories and he saw several syndicated via Newspaper Services.

National Service came next and saw Terry serve with the RAF. He chose to be a typist which gave him access to a typewriter and a good amount of free time. He started writing books, actually writing two unpublished novels on RAF headed notepaper. Terry says that these books were basically Raymond Chandler copies but not anywhere near as good as the master who was his favourite author.

After finishing his duty to his country Terry went back to Reuters but soon he left and got a job at the Twentieth Century Fox publicity department. He was based in Soho Square and not Hollywood which rankled somewhat. Eventually Terry went back to work for Newspaper Features again but the company was in trouble and would soon go down the pan. Eventually Terry came into contact with the late Peter Haining when he went up before a board for a job with The National Newsagents Society.

Someone there thought Terry was unsuitable for the job but meeting Peter Haining was the start towards becoming a bestselling writer. By this time Terry was churning out Chandleresque crime novels for Robert Hale, present day publishers of the Black Horse Western series. Terry was a Chandler buff and read everything the great man published but he felt he could never aspire to his greatness. Didn't stop him trying, though.

Eventually Terry ended up with New English Library where Peter Haining was in charge of the paperback division. Terry's first novel for the imprint was The Weekend Game and he followed that up with W.I.T.C.H. The latter book, about militant bra burning feminists, was written under the name Jane Harman which was Terry's wife's maiden name. The title stood for - we intend to create havoc.

Terry took whatever commission he could find (although he did turn down an offer of £1000 a book for writing hard core porn) and this led to him penning the novelisation of the Clint Eastwood movie, A Fistful of Dollars and then several other spaghetti western based novels. He was asked to create a new western series for New English Library - all action, violent in the style of the Italian westerns which were taking so much money at the box office and Edge came from that.



"I had never read a western novel when I did my first and I consider that fact was a cornerstone to the success of George G Gilman.. For Edge had to be an original concept since having no idea what a western book should be like I had to create the series almost out of thin air. Of course I was aware of Hollywood's version of the Western locale and what the stock characters that peopled it looked like since I grew up in an era when the cinema and television were awash with oaters."


Gilman's Edge was a hit - not initially but it gradually gained a large audience which continued to expand, making the Edge series the benchmark by which all other westerns of the period were judged.

In total the series went on for 61 books, spawned a series of Italian comic book adaptions and the pen name George G. Gilman even had his own fan club.

" I think a good western needs a fast moving story, believable characters and some violent action with a seasoning of gallows humour."

The Edge character certainly delivered those ingredients in spades. Edge would always emerge from seemingly desperate situations, often cheat almost certain death. In many ways the character was a superhero - where Batman had his utility belt, Edge had his cut-throat razor. Where Superman had his cape, Edge had his Winchester. The Edge books provided sheer enjoyable escapist fiction, never taking itself too seriously so that although westerns, the books seem to be lodged in a sub-genre of their own.


I wondered if Terry had ever been to the American West.

"Jane (my wife) and I took one of those bus tours of the South-western US many years ago - Los Angeles-Grand Canyon-Las Vegas-San Francisco and many points between. All this really gave me in terms of research for the Gilman books was a sense of "the big sky" and vast distances spread out beneath it. And I must admit the most significant part of the trip for me was walking the streets of downtown Los Angeles where my all-time favourite fictional hero Philip Marlowe plied his trade."

And so I've spoken to a literary hero of mine and I'm as excited as the kid I was when I first read the Edge novels. To my mind the Edge series is the perfect example of the British pulp tradition and the books, although very violent, are never downbeat and the narrative is so slick your eyes slide smoothly from page to page. Pick one up and before you know it your hooked which is part of the reason the books fetch so much on Ebay. Terry though, forever modest, has a theory on that.

"It never ceases to amaze me that that my ancient scribblings continue to interest readers. Although I take little notice of how they come and go on e-bay. For I think most people who acquire them in this area are collectors hopeful of making a bob or two profit in the future, rather than readers seeking to enjoy my deathless prose!"



We'll have to agree to disagree on that point as I know many people who love the Edge series as well as a lot of Terry's other Gilman stuff. Adam Steele is always worth a read but Edge is something special - these are great books that I believe will one day see a resurgence. All it takes is an enterprising publisher to start issuing the classic westerns, much in the way Hard Case Crime are doing for mysteries and a new legion of fans will be found.

Terry's top ten western movies
In no particular order:
Leon's Eastwood Dollar Trilogy
Once upon a time in the west
The Shootist
The Searchers
Soldier Blue
Rio Bravo
High Noon
Terror in a Texas Town

George G. Gilman on the web:

A man called George G. Gilman

Gilman Forum


Known Pen-names
George G Gilman, Adam Hardy (with Kenneth Bulmer), Jane Harmon, Joseph Hedges, William M James (with John Harvey and Laurence James), Charles R Pike (with Kenneth Bulmer and Angus Wells), William Pine, Thomas H Stone, William Terry

Western Icons - Adam Steele

The character of Adam Steele was, by any standards, a resounding success - 49 books in the series proper and the character also appeared in three books alongside that other western icon, Edge. Indeed it is the character of Edge that takes the sheen off Steele. Both characters were created by British writer, Terry Harknett under his George G. Gilman name, but Edge was such a true phenomenon that Adam Steele is not exactly perceived as the success he was. Back in the day the Steele books sold well but the Edge books flew from the shelves. Still 49 books is a pretty good run by any standards.

I must admit that as a teenage reader, the Edge series was my favourite and, although I tried the odd Steele (they did come from the same pen, after all). But the books seemed to me not as good as Edge and for many years I didn't read Steele. It was only later, after reading all the Edge titles, that I went back to Steele and, although I still think the Edge series is something else, I found Steele a great series. In fact these days I'm much more appreciative of Steele than ever - the books are rightly considered classics of the western genre.

There are those who actually prefer the Steele series to Edge.

The Steele books, although having their moments, were not as slickly violent or blackly humorous as the Edge titles, but then maybe that's not strictly true for the violence was often there, but it seemed that the character of Steele was not quite as violent as the halfbreed called Edge. It was as if for the Edge series the author had spawned his world from the spaghetti westerns with all their excess and for the Steele series he was very much in the west of classic Hollywood. That Steele and Edge met several times and lived in the same universe, somewhat rubbishes that arguement, but the point is there was and remains a different feel to the two series.

Steele was a Southerner and Edge a Yankee, and they were very much opposing sides of the same coin, but enough of Edge, for this little article is about Adam Steele.

The first Adam Steele book, The Violent Peace was published in 1974 and immediately sold well on the strength of the George G. Gilman name. However the book deserved its success, regardless of who the author was - it's a fine story, written with real pace and perhaps with more of an understanding of the real Old West, than displayed in the early Edge books. The story opens in the aftermath of the assassination of President Lincoln. This terrible event brings a thirst for vengeance and an old gentleman, accused of being a Southern sympathiser is murdered. That old man was pappy Steele and this sets Adam Steele off on a vengeance trail.

And so the series started.

This was the 1970's and for a time the best western fiction being written anywhere in the world came from the UK. The movies of Sergio Leone had changed the face of the western movie  and the traditional western hero became an anachronism in his own genre. This was the time of the anti-hero and the British western writers, unshackled by the legacy of American western history, followed the lead of the European's who had stolen that most American of genres and made it their own.

The books followed a similar pattern to the spaghetti westerns - more and more were churned out, becoming more and more outlandish until eventually they were even parodying themselves and the British Western boom ended. There was a time when the western section of most bookshops were dominated by British writers and their series characters. It was Gilman himself who had opened the floodgates for this in the first place and all of a sudden there were dozens of Edge clones on the shelves as more and more writers and publishers jumped on the bandwagon. Gilman himself wasn't immune to this and, besides Steele and Edge, he also created several less successful characters - The Undertaker and Apache, anyone - he also had a hand in Jubal Cade.

It was a great time to be a western fan.

With boom though there is bust and almost overnight the western series seemed to vanish from the shops, but both Steele and Edge remained popular.


"George G. Gilman (Terry Harknett) has written a terrific story in Wanted For Murder. His two plotlines twist together in what seems to be an impossible situation for Adam Steele to escape from a free man – or even with his life." Western Fiction's Review

Eventually Steele would meet up with Edge (there's no getting away from him) in the team up novel, Two of a Kind. I don't think this book showed Steele at his best. I think the character suffered being forced to share an adventure with Edge, but then neither was Edge at his best in this book. My own personal opinion on why the team up doesn't work is because  the feel of a Steele book, the voice if you like was subtly different from the Edge books and when brought together the story seemed confused. It also seemed that the author tried too hard to make the novelty of the pairing work.

However the fans lapped the book up and two more team up books would follow.

If you've never read Steele then there are many places to jump onto the series - indeed even although there was significant character development over the years, the books can be enjoyed in any order. If you fancy taking a look then just get hold of any of the titles you can find and start there.

The Steele's War sequence - books 25 - 28, offer a rare connected storyline and these are best read in order, but there's no real need to worry about continuity. Dig out any Adam Steel novel you can find and a good time is pretty much assured.

A postscript - George G. Gilman revisited his western universe for a mini-series of Edge novels set in later years and featuring an older and mellower halfbreed. And Steele would also figure in these books which are available for free HERE.

The early Steele titles had a large print run and copies of this book are relatively easy to track down for a decent price, but with the first Edge book out in digital print from Solstice Publishing, it is a possibility that one day we may see Steele popping back up digitally, pistols blazin.

THE WESTERN SERIES TOO TOUGH TO DIE

An entire week celebrating the writings of Mr George G. Gilman - Assuming you've not kept your head buried in the sand these last few weeks, you will know that the explosive, mega-selling western series Edge is coming back in both eBook and Paperback from Solstice Publishing. The centre-piece  of the week will be a Virtual Campfire piece with Terry Harknett himself, who is, of course, the man who held the George G. Gilman pen for 61 excellent Edge books, as well as many other westerns.

The Archive will contain all the usual reviews, news and nonsense but each and every day will feature at least one George G. Gilman/Edge related post. And regular readers know there ain't gonna' be just one post a day. I've also roped in a couple of guest bloggers to give their take on the Edge phenomenon.


The series that dominated the entire western genre for most of the 70's and 80's, books that had the same effect on the literary genre as the Spaghetti westerns did for its celluloid counterpart, a series that is still hugely popular with rarer copies of the old books going for triple figures. At the time of writing there is a copy of Edge 61: The Rifle, the final Edge book that sold for £1.75, on Ebay and the current bidding is up to £60.

So what is it that makes this the western series that refuses to die? Find out next week when the Archive goes over the edge to bring you the Edge week. In the meantime check out the Edge You Tube teaser below.

Tough as Steele

Adam Steele: The Losers
George G Gilman
Originally published as a NEL Paperback original
1976
Original cover price 40p

Author, George G. Gilman was not only responsible for the hugely popular Edge series, but several other characters were also created by his pen. Adam Steele was, next to Edge, the most successful and ran for 49 books, as well as three volumes in which the Virginian was teamed up with Edge.

The Steele books were equally violent as the Edge's series, the surreal violence was a trademark of the sub-genre, although Steele himself was not such a violent character and would avoid killing anyone if it was at all possible. Many readers actually prefer Steele to Edge for this reason, finding the character easier to empathise with. It's not my view but there is no doubt that Steele is a far more likeable character than that man alone.

This is the tenth book in the series and starts off with Steele being terrorised by a gang who leave him stranded in the middle of nowhere, and then ride off and commit a brutal rape of the daughter of an important man, her boyfriend is also mutilated and he too has a wealthy and important father. Steele is then hired by both men to go after the gang but Steele is not happy that the men want to see them men dead. He does however enjoy the irony of getting paid to go after men he would have gone after in any case. Steele is one Southern gentleman who it is foolish to cross.

The book is, as are all of Gilman's titles, a great fast, and fun read with the usual one-liners and surreal humour. The early Steele titles had a large print run and copies of this book are relatively easy to track down for a decent price, but with the first Edge book soon returning to digital print as an eBook from Solstice Publishing, it is a possibility that one day we may see Steele popping back up digitally, pistols blazing and teeth bared.

Another excellent western adventure from a time when Brit westerns were breathing new life into the genre.

10 westerns you must read - seven

In order that my ten books selected give a broad overview of the western genre it is essential that I pick one of the books by the group of writers known as The Piccadilly Cowboys. They were a select bunch of writers churning out adult themed westerns during the seventies and eighties.

The most famous of all the books produced by these guys was George Gilman's Edge series but the Edge bookS have been looked on in great detail elsewhere on the Archive.

In fact - as with the Wyatt Earp movie choice - I'm going to cheat here and not pick any one title but tell you a little about the various series that were published during these times when every shop had a western section. Track down any of the titles and you are guaranteed a good, enjoyable, fast paced read.

Edge of course is the most well known of all the series but the author George Gilman also penned another series called Adam Steele which was equally successful. The author also did other series such as The Undertaker and one or two of the Jubal Cade's as well as The Apache series, but none could match the success of Edge and Steele who set the benchmark for all western series of the period.


All of the novels were the literary answer to the Italian school of super violent westerns with as much black humour as gun smoke and most were fast enjoyable reads.

Breed was a particular favourite of mind during my teenage years, coming only second to Edge as far as I was concerned. Breed was, you've guessed it, a half breed who was as useful with a knife as he was a gun.
The books sold by the truck load in the UK and yet only one or two of the characters are well know in America.



All are worth checking out - these are the British answer to the pulp westerns that were so popular in years gone by. It's well worth checking out second hand shops and online auctions for some of these titles. But before you get the collecting bug be warned, some of the books can fetch crazy prices - it is not unusual for the later Edge titles to go for triple figures.

Check out the PICCADILLY COWBOYS WEB SITE