Category: Mystery Novels

Tall Man With a Gun: LONGARM: U. S. MARSHALL

Longarm is one of the first adult westerns that came on the scene in the late 1970’s. By the 60’s, the western novel was in a serious popularity decline due to the fading of the western TV show and other factors. I won’t go into what those other factors were, whole books were written on the subject. Even today, it is hard to find a book section with “western” listed, at least in those bookstores that still remain. About ten years after the Euro-western movie proved there was still a market for horse operas, someone decided the genre needed a shot of Spanish fly and the adult western was born.

THE CROOKED HINGE by John Dickson Carr

“#6 The Crooked Hinge. Sometimes Carr actually did use the supernatural in his detective novels, sometimes he only seemed to do so. The Crooked Hinge does not turn out to be a ghost story, but that won’t spare your nerves.”

-Karl Edward Wagner, “The Thirteen Best Non-Supernatural Horror Novels” (Twilight Zone Magazine, 1983)