ANDREW McBRIDE INTERVIEWED BY PAUL BISHOP ON THE SIX GUN JUSTICE PODCAST

 I was honoured to be the guest on the much-praised SIX GUN JUSTICE PODCAST.

 Two acclaimed western novelists, PAUL BISHOP and RICHARD PROSCH, have been running the SIX GUN JUSTICE podcast for a while, where the co-hosts look at most things western: western history and fiction, TV, film, radio and books (including interviews with authors, publishers etc.) So far they’ve freewheeled through a wide range of topics from how icons like Buffalo Bill and Custer have been depicted on screen and in books, to TV western shows well-known and obscure (‘Rawhide’ ‘Lancer’) western-themed comics and memorabilia, western songs (‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’) to ‘shooting the breeze’ with authors both new and established, from JAMES REASONER to WAYNE D. DUNDEE.  

Here’s the SIX GUN JUSTICE website: https://www.sixgunjustice.com/p/podcast.html 

Here you can find a list of episodes: https://sixgunjustice.buzzsprout.com/

I was interviewed for 25 minutes by PAUL BISHOP for the SIX GUN JUSTICE PODCAST episode 210, broadcast on November 14^th 2022, titled THE WORLDWIDE WEST TOUR: ENGLAND – PART 2

Paul was a police detective with the Los Angeles Police Department for 35 years and was twice selected as LAPD's Detective of the Year. This served him well in his police procedural and mystery novels, including his series about female detective Fey Croaker. He’s also written screenplays.

 I’ve done AUTHOR FAVOURITES BLOGS for two of Paul’s novels:

LIE CATCHERS:

 Some reviews of LIE CATCHERS:

‘"Lie Catchers" is something else. This is a book which goes way beyond the typical police story. … into psychological aspects rarely used in a "cop" book… Rarely will you find the kind of insight that Bishop demonstrates in this truly 5-star book.’

 ‘Wonderfully well-crafted police procedural with two main characters who leap off the page… unique, suspenseful, surprising, insightful, psychologically complex and wonderfully written.’

 Blog here: https://andrewmcbrideauthor.blogspot.com/2018/09/author-favourites-lie-catchers-by-paul.html

and HOT PURSUIT

Reviews for HOT PURSUIT:

 ‘Could hardly be better.’

 ‘The most exciting caper you're likely to find in print this year.’

 ‘A masterpiece.’

 ‘A spellbinding story.’

Blog here: https://andrewmcbrideauthor.blogspot.com/2018/09/author-favourites-hot-pursuit-by-paul.html 

I had great fun chatting with Paul. He was able to make me less nervous than I usually am doing these things. We talked about my critically-acclaimed new western novel CIMARRÓN,

THE HIGH CHAPARRAL,

The ground-breaking western novel BLOOD BROTHER by ELLIOTT ARNOLD

English western writer MATT CHISHOLM, (real name PETER WATTS) author of the highly successful McALLISTER series among others

Another best-selling western author born in England, J.T. EDSON,

LOUIS L’AMOUR,

my writing process,

whether gunfights ever happened as Hollywood depicts them

and British attempts to ‘do’ westerns on film and TV, including the episode ‘Living in Harmony’ of the cult British TV series ‘THE PRISONER.’ 

PATRICK McGOOHAN in ‘THE PRISONER’ episode ‘Living in Harmony’

 I also name-check two fine English authors, PHILIP CAVENEY (author of thrillers and children’s books) and western writer DEREK RUTHERFORD.

Why not LISTEN IN HERE? https://sixgunjustice.buzzsprout.com/795466/10984559-six-gun-justice-podcast-episode-210-the-worldwide-west-tour-england-part-2?t=0 

PETER BRANDVOLD, acclaimed, award-winning and best-selling western author on THE SIX GUN JUSTICE PODCAST:

‘…Simply the best western podcast going. Paul and Rich know their stuff, and the deep dives into the genre along with conversations with today’s top-of-the-line western professionals make the show a weekly must-listen.’

REVIEW of DEAD MAN’S EYES by DEREK RUTHERFORD

English author DEREK RUTHERFORD has produced a string of acclaimed westerns. That includes a trio featuring hero Jim Jackson - DEAD MAN’S EYES, DEAD MAN WALKING and DEAD MAN’S RETURN.

Here’s my 4 star REVIEW of DEAD MAN’S EYES:

Western mystery full of surprises.

Jim Jackson was once an outlaw, renowned for his skill with a gun. But Jim serves 10 brutalising years in a Texas prison for a murder he didn’t commit. Now he’s broken in spirit, his self-belief and courage gone, the town drunk of Parker’s Crossing, New Mexico. But a protection racket are putting the squeeze on the little settlement. Jim finds himself the unlikely defender of a community that despises him. He has to re-discover his lost courage and abilities…

Rutherford’s novel is both mystery and western; a slow-burner, dependant as much on character as action (so that when action erupts it’s that more effective) and involving a ghost town littered with deadly man-traps.

The writing has warmth and charm, the plot’s full of surprises, and Jackson’s a vulnerable, likeable hero on his torturous journey to redemption. Recommended.

Ghost towns have been a feature of the United States almost from the beginning. One of the earliest European settlements in the U.S., the British colony at Roanoke in North Carolina, was founded in 1585. According to Wikipedia, when it was visited by explorers including mapmaker JOHN WHITE in 1590 Roanoke was deserted. Its 112-121 inhabitants had vanished without trace. The word ‘CROATOAN’ was found carved into the palisade, which White interpreted to mean the colonists had relocated to nearby Croatoan Island.

Despite speculation that the colonists were massacred by Indians, there was no sign of battle or withdrawal under duress. There were no human remains or graves reported in the area, suggesting everyone left alive. Bizarrely, no thorough search was undertaken for them.

The Roanoke locality

Within 15 years reports surfaced of people with European features in Indian villages not too far away, but no hard evidence was produced. This might suggest the colonists, having left Roanoke for mysterious reasons, and feeling abandoned by Britain, simply assimilated with the local native tribes.

Native peoples of the Roanoke area c. 1590

However, there was a dramatic fate for the Zwaanendael Colony in Delaware. This became a ghost town when every single colonist was massacred by Indians in 1632. 

Most ghost towns came about through less violent means. Sometimes it was as simple as when a road or railroad line failed to follow an expected route or fell out of use. For example thousands of communities in the northern Great Plains states of Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota became ghost towns when a rail line failed to materialize. Hundreds of towns were abandoned when the Interstate highway system replaced the railroads as the favoured mode of travel.

Some unincorporated towns become ghost towns due to flooding caused by dam projects that create man–made lakes, such as Oketeyeconne in Georgia.

Many of the ghost towns that litter the deserts and mountains of the American West were originally ‘boomtowns’ that sprang up when minerals such as gold and silver were discovered nearby. But often the mineral wealth they were based on was soon dug out, or price collapses made them too expensive to continue as mining centres. Boomtowns often decreased in size as fast as they initially grew.

Old mining camps that boomed then went bust include Deadwood, South Dakota, Tombstone, Arizona and Virginia City, Montana. These still survive as active villages, towns and cities. Others – Bodie, California, Rhyolite, Nevada (the two images below)

and Vulture City, Arizona - exist only as abandoned buildings or standing ruins, bearing silent witness to vanished, or almost vanished,  populations, lonely testament to dreams lost and found.

Vulture City

Ghost towns have featured in many westerns, on both TV and film. Bad guy RICHARD WIDMARK has shoot-outs in them in both ‘Yellow Sky’ (1948)

and ‘The Law and Jake Wade’ (1958.) (below)

while RANDOLPH SCOTT and ROBERT RYAN (as a villainous and unhistorical Sundance Kid) stalk each other on the deserted streets of an abandoned town in ‘Return of the Bad men.’ (1948)

ROBERT RYAN in ‘Return of the Bad men.’

In ‘The Zanti Misfits,’ a memorable episode of the classic 1960s sci-fi show ‘The Outer Limits’ an Old West ghost town in the California desert – appropriately named Morgue - is overrun by some very nasty alien invaders: a horde of spiders that are highly intelligent, poisonous and homicidal!   

OTHER REVIEWS of DEAD MAN’S EYES:

‘'Wonderful! Even though I don't usually read Westerns, I absolutely loved it!’

‘A good story, well plotted with interesting characters and a rollicking pace… really well written too.’

‘Excellent… A great character-driven Western, plenty of surprises in an action-packed memorable tale. Will certainly look out for more from this author.’

You can find my review on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31299244-dead-man-s-eyes

And on Amazon.co.uk: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dead-Mans-Black-Horse-Western-ebook/dp/B01I3I426I/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=dead+man%27s+eyes+derek+rutherford&qid=1590493240&sr=8-1

You can also find DEAD MAN’S EYES on Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01I3I426I/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i4