High Vengeance

by Frank O'Rourke

READING CREASES ON SPINE AND ON EDGES OF COVER. CREASES ON CORNERS OF COVER. BOOKSTORE STAMP ON FIRST PAGE.

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Frank O'Rourke was an American writer known for western and mystery novels and sports fiction. O'Rourke wrote more than 60 novels and numerous magazine articles.

Born in Denver, Colorado he attended Kemper Military School. A talented amateur baseball player, he considered trying out for a professional team, but was called up for service in World War II. At the end of the war he decided to become a writer.

Several of O'Rourke's novels were filmed, The Bravados (1958) was the first, and his novel A Mule for the Marquesa was made into a popular movie called The Professionals (1966).

Later in life, O'Rourke turned to writing children's literature. He committed suicide on April 27, 1989.

In addition to his actual name O'Rourke also wrote under the following names: Kevin Connor; Frank O'Malley and Patrick O'Malley

Reviews

[Still · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review has gone askew from the 1st shot.
But screw it.

This is a fine Western by Frank O'Rourke - a Western author I've always had trouble with.
Overly wordy, antiquated (originally published in 1954) but charming in some weird way that makes sense only in my own tick-tock time.

The first chapter is among the greatest stand-alone short stories in a Western novel I've ever read.
O'Rourke could have knocked this chapter out, sold it as a short story to popular mainstream magazines of the era. It would have been a rattler of a rodeo tale.
Instead it serves to introduce us to a character that turns out to be the sidekick of the main character.
A tough hombre who taught our youngish lead character everything he knows about being a top-hand.

Thereafter the novel belongs to a tough, youngish cowboy named Jim Bryan who accompanies his old sidekick Red Adkins to a rodeo competition in the town of Chamiso.
The kid is on a vengeance trip. It's a woman responsible for his father's murder that he's after.
It's not an actual murder ...not a murder recognized in a court of law but it's the death of his father at this woman's hands all the same.

She has a new man now. A prosperous rancher named Buckingham caught in the middle of a range war between two warring toughs -Ernie Crockett and Charley Harrison. They're bleeding off his cattle and in between rustling from Buckingham, they rustle each other's steers.

Convoluted for a Western, right?

You better hang on to yourself ...things get better even after the plot gets so much boggier this short novel threatens to come to a slow-motion halt.

The pay-off is worth the wait.

For instance, there are passages like this:

That brought him unwillingly to consideration of his future. // Even if he wanted to play the fool, sneak back on the high range for another try, he could never form another crew. //He had made the mistakes; he had carried his greed and his pride straight through to absolute failure. And there was no good reason for such a result.

He had never hesitated to try the bold schemes. He could plan better than any man in this country, he was not shackled by morals or remorse. He could lead and use men, he exacted discipline from their kind where lesser leaders failed in the very beginning. He had a sharp mind and he saw life in its true colors, and still he had failed.

and this:

The old man spoke truth: you got nowhere casting down a back trail, the past lay dead when a man tried to double around and use it in the future.

Frank O'Rourke enjoys the use of the colon and semi-colon... unique in genre fiction, I'd imagine.
He blows hard at times like the winds coming down from the sharper edges of the peaks above.
Sorry imitation - my apologies.

It's a grand Western tale.
You won't regret reading at least the first chapter.
It's standalone brilliant.
If the remainder of the book fails to measure up, it's not for wont of the author trying.

Recommended to fans of the Western.