Edge: The Prisoners
George G. Gilman
First published 1981
original cover price £1.00
(American cover shown)
This was number 39 in the long running western series and Gilman was showing no signs of letting up on the quality and this is another fast paced, blackly humorous tale of the man known as Edge.
Edge stumbles into trouble - this time coming across a sheriff and his prisoner - when Edge comes upon the pair the prisoner has mortally wounded the lawman and is clinging on for dear life to his runaway horse. Edge takes aim and blows the man out of the saddle.
When Edge reaches the two men, the lawman is barely alive, his prisoners knife sticking out of his stomach. He know he is going to die and asks Edge to take the prisoner to Colorado - he reveals that his prisoners name is Joe Straw and that there is a one thousand dollar bounty on the man. Edge figures that a grand isn't that much money but it's a grand more than he has and so he promises the dying sheriff that he will deliver the man to the authorities and the neck stretching that is awaiting for him.
Joe Straw is a half breed, half Comanche, half Irish, and all trouble. No sooner have they set off on their journey than they come across a pair of gold miners. At first the miners invite Edge and Straw into their camp but just after Edge has cleaned Straw's wounds they turn on them. Big mistake and Edge finishes off both men before their weapons have even drawn leather.
There is much of the Gilman brand of black humour as Edge leads his prisoner towards Colorado, facing many dangers on the way, but when they reach their destination rather than the end of the danger it proves to be only the start. What sets the Edge books apart from a lot of similar westerns is the humor and the characters - Edge for one is a brilliant creation but Gilman takes much care in sketching out the character of Joe Straw and he comes across as totally immoral but strangely likable and there is much entertaining banter between captor and prisoner. In fact this character play reveals that although Straw is bad man Edge is a whole lot worse. Straw does whatever evil he does to get buy, often because his survival depends upon it but Edge does what he does simply because he can.
"Why?" Straw demanded. "It ain't worth it, man! That bastard said it! A lousy thousand bucks!" His panicked roll away from Edge had brought him up against the carcass of the stallion. Now he used the hand of his good arm to get leverage on the saddle horn and push himself to his feet. His gun-shot left arm hung loosely by his side. "All the way to friggin Crater for that?"
Edge dropped his cigarette to the trail and stepped on the glowing ash. "I got nowhere else to go, fella. And it's a thousand dollars more than what's waiting for me anywhere else."Edge considers himself something of a gambler, looking to hit a one thousand dollar jackpot with a one armed bandit. That line is a pure Gilmanism and these are liberally sprinkled throughout the book - some provoke a groan, others a wry smile but some are laugh out loud funny.
The Prisoners is another all action western with one of the most alluring anti-heroes ever created - either in print and on celluloid. Edge makes Eastwood's Man with no name look like a Sunday School teacher and some of the graphic violence could prove too much for some readers. But it's all done with a certain flair and tongue pushed firmly in cheek and like the rest of the series it really is a page turner.
Note the series was hugely successful in its day spawning 61 Edge adventure, a few team up novels with another Gilman character Adam Steele, a fan club, comic books and a range of merchandise including badges and tee shirts. The final Edge adventure was called The Rifle but Gilman wrote several adventures about an older Edge that are available as E-books
HERE
