My Arizona author for the month is David B. Riley, frequent resident of this state who sadly passed in Tucson last January. He's the co-editor of 'Six-Guns Straight from Hell 3', unsurprisingly the third in a series of weird western anthologies, with J. A. Campbell, and he's one of the twenty contributors too, his story a constantly interesting highlight that keeps us on the hop in the best way. What's more, as tends to be the case with weird westerns, a few of these stories are set right here in Arizona as well, or at least the Arizona territory.
As an anthology of stories, it almost inevitably both benefits and suffers from that approach. It's the rarest of anthologies that either completely rocks or completely sucks and we shouldn't be surprised to find that this one sits in between. I found a few highlights, some by authors new to me, which is the mark of success for any anthology, but a few others left me dry. Only a couple feel like they shouldn't have been included, one in particular standing out less for being bad and more for being very close to another story both in what it tries to do and in where it's situated in the book. It clearly suffers from the comparison.
I'm not sure I have a favourite story because a few affected me in different ways, but I may have to go for 'Fiori's Cabinet of Curiosities' by James Fitzsimmons. Not only is it a thoroughly action-packed lot of fun, but it's original, fresh and very cool indeed. I'd like to see this one expanded into something a lot more substantial and the author may well have done that already. I certainly want to know more about him, but the worst aspect to this book is the lack of a section introducing the authors with bios and links. That omission annoyed me last month when I was wearing my author's hat with 'Out of the Shadows'. It annoyed me just as much with this book when I'm just a reader.
Certainly, the book starts off really well with Sam Knight's 'Leaving Dry Gulch on the Midnight Train', a ghost story that's much more than a ghost story. It's a great way to kick off a weird west anthology, given that it's full of death, atmosphere and downright weirdness. I recognise Dry Gulch and some of the supporting characters from other works by multiple authors in that shared setting, but it doesn't matter if you don't. It stands alone well.
It also stands alone in this book, because there are a lot of different approaches taken to the simple theme of the weird western but they do group quite well into a few different ideas, none of which are applicable to that opening story.
There are quite a few cryptid stories here, taking the straightforward Wild West and adding a weird creature into the mix. That starts early with Kristal Stittle's 'Gruber', a monster I haven't seen in any form before, which warrants kudos. It's a new mythology and it's a welcome one. I have heard of what Joel Jenkins calls a behinder, merely as a hidebehind. His story, 'In the Night Watches', closes out the book with a tale of a legendary Indian hunter and a Norwegian prospector against the creature that strikes from behind. J. A. Campbell pits a mixed race marshal against a skinwalker. Rob Francis has a town face off against sand lions in a story that's agreeably old school 'Weird Tales' weird.
Perhaps the best cryptid story here is A. K. McCarthy's 'Manifest Destiny', which places us firmly onto the Oregon Trail, starting when the wagon train heading west is down to only four survivors. The rest have already lost the game, but these four ready themselves to fight the wolf scorpion monster that proved so deadly to their fellow players. I like the monster, I like the character who eventually takes it down and I like everything about the way in which it happens.
The other prominent theme is revenge, something that kicks in with Matthew Hellman's karmic story early in the anthology. More focused are a bunch towards the end, like 'Jacob Lowe's Return' by Jay Seate, C. W. Blackwell's 'Apostles of the Spider God' and Radar DeBoard's 'Dead Hand Shooting'. The quality varies but a lot of authors clearly felt that they wanted to give their characters appropriate revenge for whatever, even if the weird element in their western was that they were dead when they started their stories. Bert Edens has a different approach, with much more immediate revenge due the lead in his excellent 'Blood, Mud and Retribution'.
If there's a third clump of stories, it's ones that don't have any interest in being clumped together. I wouldn't put David B. Riley's 'Whatever Happened to Ignacio Cortez?', 'Tinhorn Tintype' by John Kiste and 'The Surest Shot' by Bryan Stubbles in any shared category except "weird western" and "neatly original". Riley introduces time travel as his weird element (or does he?), Kiste tells a familiar story in an unfamiliar way and Stubbles goes all the way back to the good old deal-with-the-Devil with wild results. That familiar tale of Kiste's, by the way, is the gunfight at the OK Corral, which quite literally bumps into the story as we least expect it, the lead character being a photographer in his shop.
I've mentioned pretty much everyone here, so I shouldn't forget Patrick Dorn's unlikely demise for a defrocked preacher that's highly memorable, David Boop's old school steampunk adventure and K. C. Grifaut's odd choice of MacGuffin for his or her unusual zombie story. Ross Baxter's take on zombies isn't particularly usual either pitting his law enforcement heroes against a notable enemy in charge of a cult army. It annoyed me, though, because I don't know what his zombie plague in West Texas is called. The first couple of times it comes up, it's the Wrath. Then it turns into the Wraith. I don't know who slipped up on the proofreading, but it didn't help this story.
The best piece I haven't focused on, though, is Asher Ellis's 'In Return'. It's a neat little twist tale with a snake oil salesman take on what we could consider a monkey's paw sort of story. It isn't strictly, but it has much the same effect and it's handled exactly as it should be: short, sweet and memorable. We see what we think is the twist, because it usually would be, and then Ellis hits us with the real one. It brought a big grin out of me in the wee hours of the morning and I hope I didn't wake the better half up with my verbal appreciation.
I haven't read either of the two previous 'Six-Guns Straight from Hell' anthologies, but I'll certainly keep my eyes open for them. I have, however, read Riley before, both as an author and an editor and I've always found something worthwhile in his books. I have a couple more already on my shelf that I haven't read yet, so I can remember him more in future months. Hopefully I can still find some of the books I don't have, now that he's not going to be showing up at events to sell them to me. It's still odd to think of him as no longer with us but, like every author, he'll live on in his words. ~~ Hal C F Astell
For more titles by David B Riley click here
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