Sudden Plays a Hand

Sudden

by Oliver Strange

The man’s hands were bound. From a branch overhead dangled a lariat, the end in the hands of two burly men. Someone was raising a hand as a signal when Sudden stepped forward, guns drawn. ‘Mebbe one of you will tell me what’s goin’ on?’ he suggested. ‘We’re stringing up a cattle thief,’ a broken-nosed man snarled. ‘Ain’t that plain enough?’ ‘What’s your name?’ Sudden asked quietly. ‘Lanty,’ the man replied. ‘What’s that to you?’ Sudden grinned, a cold and mirthless grin. ‘I might need it for your tombstone.’

Genres: Westerns

158 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

Reviews

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

I actually bought this for an uncle of mine who expressed a liking for these books and wondered if copies could still be found. I'm good at finding almost any second-hand book you'd care to mention, but this took some digging, largely because these books don't stay on the shelves too long and when I found this one, I paid considerably more than I do for books of this age and in this condition. So naturally I decided to read the damned thing myself before presenting it to my uncle.

And I have to admit it's a corker of a story, packed with shoot-outs down lonely roads, showdowns in crowded taverns, double-crosses, dirty dealings and derring-do. Sudden is a quick-on-the-draw gunman who apparently specialises in riding into town and setting things straight. With him is Yorky, a runaway teen who functions as a loyal sidekick and engages in some ass-kicking in his own right.

I enjoyed this novel for what it was: a gripping, action-packed hell-raising Western yarn that took me back to my cowboy fad as a young lad, devouring paperback westerns, cowboy comics and Clint Eastwood movies. But I have to note that the love interest woven through it is pretty off-putting: a man rapes a woman he has never seen before, discovers in the process that she was a virgin and therefore, conforming to some strange and belated sense of morality, marches her to the nearest priest and gets married. Over the course of the story, they manage to fall in love. It's very quaint and just a little vomit-inducing.

[Falcon Blackwood]

I picked this up cheaply at my favourite second hand bookshop in Aberystwyth as I liked the vintage look of the cover. I didn't actually intend to read it (!) but curiosity got the better of me. It's a book of it's time, I'll say that. Big on Western atmosphere, it was like delving back into the mythical, non-existant days of "Rawhide" and "Wagon Train" so had some charm because of that. Books like these were my dear old Dad's favoured reading when we went away on our holidays...he would sit with a frown on his face every night, consuming coffee and sandwiches until after four or five days, he'd finished and on to the next book. We're talking the nineteen sixties now, to be sure you get the picture. And as far as that goes, the book was on the low side of OK. The titular hero and his plucky sidekick wander around in a way that gets tedious after a while, to the extent that I couldn't really be bothered to find out what was going on. Everyone was a double-crosser, it was like a slice of the Tory party. But the thing that really turned me off was the stereotypical treatment of the woman in the story. She is raped by a main character who is a stranger to her and supposed to be a "good guy". He then abducts her and forces her to marry him because he discovers that she's a virgin. What? Then after the many aimless wanderings of the storyline she falls in love with the aforementioned monster and they live happily ever after! What a load of offensive old tripe. I'm so glad times have changed.

[Sani]

how can I write without even reading the book?

[Vinay Vibhushan]

A racy book by Oliver Strange. Brought back my childhood memories. For those who like Westerns all ten Sudden books by Oliver Strange are a must read.

[StoryWeaver]

Loose and easy reading with that likeable "western' feel thanks to the Lead Character's 'drawl'