Vintage Western Novels: Adam Steele #1: The Violent Peace - George G. Gilman (Terry Harknett)

Over the years I’ve had a bit of a love/hate relationship with the work of British Western writer George G. Gilman, who was really a prolific paperbacker named Terry Harknett. I’ve read more than two dozen entries in his most successful series, Edge, and while I really enjoy the plotting and pacing, and I’m even fond of the groan-inducing puns the series is known for, I don’t like the graphic violence and the vicious amorality of the books. Even so, I find myself drawn to read one now and then.

Harknett’s second most successful series features a former Confederate cavalryman named Adam Steele. Steele and Edge even met in several crossover volumes. Both series were reprinted in the U.S. by Pinnacle, often with title changes. The first Steele book, THE VIOLENT PEACE, was published by Pinnacle as REBELS AND ASSASSINS DIE HARD. I believed I had read that one many years ago but never continued with the series. Recently, thinking that I might give the Steele books another try, I decided to reread it, only this time around it would be the e-book version, under the original title THE VIOLENT PEACE.

Well, I discovered that I must have started but never finished it, because I have no memory of it beyond the first few chapters, which occur on the night Abraham Lincoln is shot at Ford’s Theater. The Civil War is over, and Adam Steele is supposed to meet his estranged father at a tavern in Washington D.C. so they can mend the rift between them. Unfortunately, in the uproar over Lincoln’s assassination, the elder Steele is lynched by a group of men who claim that he was part of the conspiracy to kill the president. Adam Steele arrives too late to save his father, but he immediately sets out to track down and kill the men responsible for the lynching.

All that, I remember. But I don’t think I read beyond that point, because Steele follows the murderers to Tennessee and finds himself mixed up in such a bizarre, over-the-top situation that I feel certain I would have recalled if I ever read it. In the last section of the book, Steele finds himself facing enemies the likes of which I don’t think I’ve ever encountered before in a Western.

Of course, THE VIOLENT PEACE isn’t much of a Western, taking place as it does in Washington D.C., Virginia, and Tennessee. I may have found that off-putting enough that I never continued with the series all those years ago. The violence is just as graphic and disturbing as in the Edge books, and I found Adam Steele to be an even less sympathetic protagonist than Edge. However, I did enjoy Harknett’s plotting in this one, and I like the fast-paced style of his writing. I’m not a big fan of origin stories to start with, and that’s definitely what THE VIOLENT PEACE is. From the looks of them, the other books in the series are more traditional Westerns. I found enough to like in this book, and in the Edge books I’ve read, that I’m going to read at least the second book in the Adam Steele series, and then we’ll see how things go from there.

Forgotten Books: Eve of Evil - George G. Gilman (Terry Harknett)

I always try to read something Christmas-themed for my Forgotten Books post closest to the holiday. This year's book comes from a bit of an unlikely source. The Edge series launched the British Western boom and also influenced American Westerns for several years with its graphic violence and dark humor. They were reprinted in the U.S. by the original Pinnacle Books with covers by the great Bruce Minney and were very successful. I read quite a few of them during the late Seventies and early Eighties, including this Christmas novel, and I just reread it in an e-book edition.

For those of you not familiar with the series, Edge is really Josiah Hedges, a farmer who went off to the Civil War (his adventures there are chronicled in several flashback volumes within the series) and fought beside several men who turned into brutal outlaws after the war. They show up at Hedges' farm before he returns from the war and proceed to torture and murder Hedges' younger brother because they think there's money hidden on the farm. When Hedges finds out about this, he tracks them down and kills them in bloody fashion, picking up the nickname Edge along the way. After that he becomes a drifter, riding into troublesome situations that always turn extremely violent. He tries to settle down a few times, but that always ends badly. The overall grimness of the series is broken up by Edge's penchant for puns and bad jokes, many of which are veiled references to modern-day popular culture. A lot of these come close to breaking the fourth wall but don't quite.

In EVE OF EVIL, Edge finds himself in a ghost town in Wyoming's Wind River Mountains on Christmas Eve, although he doesn't know what day it is when the book starts. A young couple named Joseph and Maria show up. She's pregnant, of course, and her rancher father has sent gunmen to kill Joseph. The rancher is also involved in a dispute with some sheepherders—or shepherds, if you will. There's a gunman named Starr who dies in the east. There's a whore named Angel. There are three strangers from Japan—three kings from the Orient? You get the idea. The story of the Nativity plays out all over again in Wyoming, although there are a lot more gunfights in this one. And there's a bit of a twist in the ending.

The Edge series is pretty much a love-it-or-hate-it proposition. I always enjoyed the books. Unlike all the house-name Western series, Edge was the brainchild of one man, British author Terry Harknett, who wrote all the books under the pseudonym George G. Gilman. Because of that, the voice remains consistent all the way through. There are stretches where the series gets a little too jokey and the pop culture references a little too blatant for my taste. That's not the case in EVE OF EVIL. Harknett plays things relatively straight, and as a result I enjoyed the book quite a bit and thought it held up well to rereading more than 35 years later. In fact, since I never finished the series before, I think I might go back and pick it up again, along with some of Harknett's other series that I never sampled.

Edge #1: The Loner - George G. Gilman (Terry Harknett)

This book originally came out in England in 1971, and I must have read it a few years after that when the Edge series was picked up in the U.S. by Pinnacle Books (the first Pinnacle, an imprint that was a spin-off from the porn publisher Bee-Line, not the Pinnacle Books that are published today by Kensington). The first time I saw any of the Edge books was in Monnig’s Department Store in downtown Fort Worth, when I worked in the book department there in the fall of 1975. Several of my customers who read Westerns liked them, but in the words of one customer that I’ve never forgotten, “They’re sure not like them Louis L’Amours.”


Well, no. They’re not. In fact, although I had read a lot of Westerns by then, I think it’s safe to say I’d never read any like the Edge books.


The set-up really isn’t that non-traditional. Union cavalry captain Josiah Hedges returns after the Civil War to the Iowa farm that his younger brother Jamie has kept going during the conflict, intending to resume his normal life despite all the death and horror he’s witnessed during the war. But when he gets home, he finds that Jamie has been tortured, robbed, and murdered, and fairly recently, too. With nothing to keep him there, Hedges goes after the killers, and in the course of trailing them he discovers that they’re a group of no-account former soldiers he knew during the war. Obsessed with vengeance, Hedges plans to track them down and kill them, and heaven help anybody who gets in his way. It’s during this quest that a mispronunciation of his name leads to him being called Edge, a monicker he doesn’t mind adopting.


What sets this book apart, at least initially, is the high level of graphic violence. I just reread it for the first time in more than thirty years, and it’s just as shocking as it was back in the Seventies. Edge is very much an anti-hero. The only thing that makes him even a little bit sympathetic is the fact that he’s not quite as bad as the men he’s after. There’s also a heavy dose of gallows humor, as Edge turns out to be quick with a bad pun, especially after he’s just killed somebody.


I was a little thrown by the violence back then (I still don’t like really graphic violence in books and movies), but there was no denying the sheer speed and power of the writing. I read most of the books in the series, and the author – British novelist Terry Harknett, writing under the pseudonym George G. Gilman – gives the whole thing an epic feel by providing flashbacks to Edge’s service during the Civil War and really fleshing out his character, along with those of his enemies. There’s also a strong satiric streak to the stories which becomes more apparent as the series goes along. This first entry is pretty serious except for the occasional puns and one-liners by Edge, which are also more prevalent in later books. In rereading THE LONER now in the new e-book edition, I was impressed by how well it holds up.


The Edge series isn’t for everybody, but you’ll be able to tell within a few chapters whether or not the level of violence is too high for you. If you like the first book, I recommend sticking with the series, because it really does evolve in interesting ways as it goes along. For now, it’s good to see the first one available again after a number of years. This is an important series in the history of paperback Western novels.

Edge #1: The Loner

Starting tomorrow, the ebook reprint of the first novel in the long-running Edge Western series will be available from Amazon, Smashwords, and the other usual suspects.  The cover is a nice one, reminiscent of the original series but different as well.  The book includes a pair of fine introductions by the author, Terry Harknett, and our friend Gary Dobbs, who played a large part in making the series available again.

I first read this novel more years ago than I like to think about and enjoyed it a great deal.  Pinnacle published nearly fifty books in the series, and I read a lot of them (but not all).  Other books were published in England but not in the U.S., and in recent years Terry Harknett has written several sequels that take up the story of Edge's life as an older man.  This seems like a good time for me to reread the first one, which I intend to do in the near future.  I like books written in a distinctive voice, and the Edge novels certainly qualify.  At the time they first came out, there wasn't anything else like them, and although they were widely imitated, they still remain the prime example of Piccadilly Cowboy sub-genre of Westerns.  The Edge series probably isn't for all Western readers, but I've always liked it and hope its return is a triumphant one.