This Pulp Serenade review of PRAIRIE RAIDERS pretty much sums up why I love Harry Whittington’s books. They write, in part:
One of the hallmarks of a Harry Whittington book is a protagonist driven by an all-consuming obsession, a mission that rises above morality, a cause that is more important that their lives. It is characteristic of both his Crime novels as well as his Westerns. In To Find Cora, Joe Byars hunts for his missing wife and eventually finds her in the clutches of another man as fanatical and as himself. In Shadow at Noon, Jeff Clane wasn’t supposed to survive the set-up duel, but he did, and found himself in more trouble than ever—only his thirst for vengeance keeps him going. And men, money and murder can’t satiate Bernice Hopper’s desire for happiness in Fires that Destroy, a title that is the perfect metaphor for many of Whittington’s characters and their desperate pursuits.
[…]A lean 103 pages, Prairie Raiders bolts along with the same force and intensity as Clay Webb. Whittington’s prose is fast and hard, the Western action stirring, and with a strong sense of psychology and character (two of the author’s strongest suits). There’s not a moment or a word wasted in this book. Chalk up another winner to the prolific writing machine that was Harry Whittington.
Good post, Lee. I’ve only read two Whittington books, FIRES THAT DESTROY and WEB OF MURDER, both lean, hard stories, both well told, and without feeling like the story was rushed.
Curse you, Goldberg… you woke me up to Whittington with an earlier blog post. I sampled, got hooked, and now I’m faced with the fact that so much of his work is OOP and damned hard to get hold of!