And the sheriff said to the private dick....

A comment on the Archive 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.

THE GAME IS AFOOT

STARTING TOMORROW ON THE ARCHIVE

THE SHERLOCK HOLMES WEEKEND

What is it about Sherlock Holmes? The most filmed fictional character in the world, what is it that gives the character, considered an annoyance by his own creator, such longevity?

Doyle wrote in the 1927 introduction to his final collection of Holmes short stories, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes – “I had full determined at the conclusion on The Memoirs to bring Holmes to an end. I felt that my literary energies should not be directed too much into one channel. Had Holmes never existed I could have not have done more, though he has stood in the way of recognition for my more serious work.”

Holmes’s fame is such that some people actually think he existed and when Doyle originally killed the character off, men walked around London in mourning and wearing black armbands. For many years the Abbey National Building Society, the business on the real 221B Baker Street, employed full time staff to answer all the letters they received addressed to Mr Sherlock Holmes. These days the letters, and they still come, least they do when there's no postal strike, go straight to the Sherlock Holmes museum.

“Conan Doyle had a singularly powerful romantic imagination. The truth is – and this is often obscured – that the Holmes stories are a great artistic triumph, of a very strange kind, achieved without the writer’s full engagement.” C. P. Snow 1974

Often the Holmes stories were written grudgingly, it shows in some of the stories, and tossed off in one draft. Mistakes were often made with continuity and reading some of the stories now, there are occasions when the writing is clumsy. However when you stumble upon one of the better stories in the canon, the old spark starts ignite and we are drawn into the world of Sherlock Holmes. And it is a world of afternoon tea, of impeccable manners, a time when brains would often triumph over brawn, good over evil and a razor thin drug addicted sleuth kept the streets safe.

Holmes has been reinvented by successive generations and this December sees the latest cinematic Holmes when Robert Downey plays the character for Guy Ritchie’s new adaptation of the classic character. Me, I’ll always have a soft spot for Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce but I would love for the new version to be success. Fingers crossed, I guess.

Over the next two days The Archive is firmly in the world of Sherlock Holmes. Coming up we’ve posts by Charles Ardai who tells us why Holmes is just right for Hardcase Crime, we talk to author and Holmes fan, Rafe McGregor, we also interview Avril Field Taylor author of Murder at Oakwood Grange, and Evan Lewis gives us his take on Sherlock Junior, the classic Buster Keaton movie which you can also watch in full here on the Archive. Add to that we’ve a potted review of every single story in the canon as well as a look at Holmes in the cinema and on TV. There’s also an article on how to emulate Sherlock Holmes, which will cover all the minute details for you including where to get the best drugs. And if that’s not enough then you’re sure to find more in our Sherlock Holmes weekend.