CANYON OF THE DEAD by ANDREW McBRIDE

Up until April 2017 I had 2 acclaimed western novels, THE PEACEMAKER – published by Sundown Press as a paperback and e.book – and SHADOW MAN published by Crowood Press as an e.book – available to buy.

Reviews of THE PEACEMAKER:

‘A great book’ Spur award-winning and Pulitzer Prize-nominated author ROBERT VAUGHAN

‘For pure writing style, McBride’s gritty prose nails the time and place of his story with bold authority. …this relatively new author has thoroughly, and rightly so, claimed his place among the top Old West storytellers.’ RALPH COTTON (also a Pulitzer-Prize nominated novelist.)

SHADOW MAN: ‘A little masterpiece waiting for you to turn the page.’

Well, now there’s 4 more!  My 4 other western novels, originally published as hardbacks and paperbacks, have now been re-issued as e.books by Crowood Press. They are CANYON OF THE DEAD, DEATH WEARS A STAR, DEATH SONG and THE ARIZONA KID. They too have received acclaim. I’ll be blogging about them separately over the coming weeks.

I thought I’d start with CANYON OF THE DEAD, which was the first of my westerns to be published.

Authors are very often fond of their first published works. Not only does it mark a breakthrough for us into the public arena, we admire our early work for its freshness and energy even if we’re still working out how to do the job properly – a bit like having affection for your young, if sometimes foolish, self.

I have the same affection for CANYON OF THE DEAD, although – and this might be a more honest confession than you often hear from authors – I wouldn’t rate it as a favourite. I got better as a writer! Reading it now, I think it’s probably too busy, there’s too much going on, and the pace is too breathless. As I wrote more, I learned to control my energy and settle down. There’s also one episode in the story that I wouldn’t include now. But what’s done is done, and CANYON OF THE DEAD remains, in my opinion, a good book and not just a good debut.  

CANYON OF THE DEAD BLURB:

Calvin Taylor had learned the tricks of his trade scouting against the Apaches. Now the Indian Wars were almost over, he was using those same deadly skills to hunt down lawbreakers of all races.

Taylor believed there was an organisation behind the stock-thieving sweeping Arizona. In the grim Canyon of the Dead he located the robbers’ roost and the outlaw leader. But trapped as he was in a web of treachery, violence and intrigue, pursued by a crazed Apache renegade, his next problem was how to get out of the canyon alive and avoid the shadow of the hangman’s noose.

All 6 of my westerns, including the 4 re-issues, are set in the territories of Arizona and New Mexico in the 1870s and 1880s. All feature CALVIN TAYLOR as the central character – former Indian scout turned man hunter, Wells Fargo agent, Range Detective and sometimes sheriff.

I’d almost forgotten this, but an original role model for Calvin Taylor – the Apache scout turned lawman (in one form or another) - was TOM HORN, who remains a controversial figure in western history even to this day.

I was wrestling with the dilemma of genre fiction writers – it’s easy to make villains interesting, but how do you manage it with heroes? Presenting them as flawless and massively heroic you run the risk of making them not only ‘too good to be true’ but also boring. I wanted a hero who was still heroic but flawed and vulnerable. Calvin Taylor’s sympathies with Native Americans makes him an outsider in his own society; he’s regarded as someone whose wilderness and fighting skills make useful in taming a wild frontier, but too different and dangerous to be fully accepted. As such he has similarities with one of the classic western outsiders – the character JOHN WAYNE portrayed so powerfully in THE SEARCHERS. 

The story also brings Taylor into contact with ranchers who helped open up Arizona Territory – men such as PETE KITCHEN

 and 'Texas' JOHN SLAUGHTER.

So that’s my introduction to CANYON OF THE DEAD. I hope you enjoy it.

EXTRACT

Calvin Taylor came from his thoughts. He saw the ears of the horses pointing to the east and he looked that way. He made out a dim shape standing in a clump of junipers, behind a screen of foliage; a green shadow that might be a man with a rifle in his hands.

The thing to do, Taylor decided, was not to show he’d seen the man but to keep walking over to his horse, then take action.

Behind him he heard the click of a weapon coming on full cock.

To find out more, where to buy etc. see my Amazon author pages, Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/Andrew-McBride/e/B01N9O1C05/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

And Amazon.co.uk: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Andrew-McBride/e/B01N9O1C05/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

REVIEWS OF MY WORK GENERALLY:

‘Tough, taut and elegant… characterised by assured storytelling… the Calvin Taylor books are quietly remarkable for their subtle reinvention of the western, eschewing clichés… the writing is powerfully evocative of time and place.’

‘If McBride's stories can't bring the western back to life, then someone better call an undertaker.’

Of CANYON OF THE DEAD, DEATH WEARS A STAR: ‘I have derived immense pleasure from Andrew McBride’s superb sequence of ‘death’ westerns, Canyon of the Dead, Death Wears a Star… and Death Song.’

As I say, I’ll be blogging about each re-issue separately over the coming weeks. Watch this space!