Maximum range

by John Henry Reese

Aaron Duffy slid off his horse and dropped the reins. "Vern Wood, by all that's holy," he uttered, kneeling in the wet grass. He turned the slicker-clad body over and knew a dead face when he saw it.

But not long dead. There was a lump on the side of his head over his left ear. The skin had split and bled a little, but Deputy Sheriff Vern Wood had survived far worse than this...

Vern had been no particular friend of Duffy's, but it was always pitiful to see a man newly and violently dead. Gray face, brown eyes walled back and squinted to show just the whites. Mouth gaping...

An under the black slicker, looped around his neck, the six-foot blacksnake whip that had been his trademark.

177 pages, Hardcover

First published October 21, 1981

About the author

Pseudonyms for this author include: Cody Kennedy Jr. and John Jo Carpenter. John Reese in 1981- "I have never cared what any critic said about my work and still do not. I was never an ‘author,’but I was a production professional.” His output was remarkable. He sold over 500 stories to the pulps, graduated to the slicks, and became the top freelance contributor to the Saturday Evening Post. Doubleday published his first novel in 1943 and by 1980 he had written more than 40 more. His list included many high original Westerns, especially the Jesus on Horseback trilogy, but he developed in other directions. Big Mutt , is a best selling dog story for children, in print more than 30 years-winner of New York Herald Tribune Award, Children’s Book, 1952. The Looters explores the world of organized crime and became a film by Universal Pictures [Charley Varrick, ©1973]. Ten novels spotlight private investigator Jefferson Hewitt. Another trilogy with This Wild Land chronicles the powerful and passionate Shepherd family on and made concessions to the then current appetite for sex and violence. His production record alone stamps him as a notable writer, but he had other claims to high rating. One would be originality. An agent once described him as “incredibly imaginative.” There is a strong element of disillusion in Reese’s humor. The antics of the human race left him “confused and depressed.” After his years in politics and the newspaper business, he suspected that crooks and phonies outnumber the honest men in our world. He thought that many of today’s college graduates “ought to be recalled as unsafe at any speed.” Observation told him that “the noble red man was a myth” and that “tribal life was hell.” At the same time he respected courage and honor and loyalty. The mixture of skepticism and faith adds a special tone to his work. The flavor is sharpened by a high degree of literacy. He was formidably self-educated and called himself “a nut about the English language.” He delighted in good prose and was a fine stylist himself. From all this his principals as a writer emerge: “I always tell ambitious writers-to-be that if they haven’t read, they can’t write.” His second dictum: “If they haven’t lived, they can’t write.” He himself drew on an incredible reservoir of experience. He headed James Roosevelt’s campaign for governor, spent years as a Los Angeles newsman, and was at home in Hollywood. Nothing like this happens to the young literati of today. Reese fans contend that he was one of the equal or better-known practitioners of his craft: that in his own territory he was as good as they come. Jack Smith quoted Reese when he wrote about him in the Los Angeles Times upon his death: “Many a time I have looked back over my career trying to find something in it worthwhile. About all I remember with any pride was running Richard Nixon out of the City Hall pressroom. I told him something like ‘Go on, get out. Nobody can square you with Van. He says you have no guts and no principle and will probably go far.’” Jack goes on to retell the story of how Reese received hundreds of calls at home for the Failure to Provide [Deadbeat Dad] Office of the District Attorney. Seems his number was near that of the office. He was a compassionate man and it shows in his work. He couldn’t bear to change his number stating “There’s something about the anonymity of a wrong number that seems to cloak it with the frankness of the confessional and all I can do is try to exhibit a little compassion myself when they want to talk to the wrong number god.” Reese asked Jack not to retell this and many other stories for fear it would hurt his reputation as a curmudgeon. What he lacked in formal education, he made up for in integrity, honesty, loyalty and principal and, of course, a very colorful imagination. Jack Smith further wrote: “Here’s to an old grouch, and a very good man.”

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