Book Review: The Slavers

Book Review: 'The Slavers'
(Carmody)
by Peter McCurtain

5 / 5 Stars

'The Slavers' (156 pp) was published by Belmont Tower books in January 1970. It's one of what eventually would be six westerns featuring the 'Carmody' character.

According to the Ben Bridges blog, Peter McCurtin was born in Ireland in 1929 and when a young man emigrated to the United States, where during the 1960s he ran a bookstore in Maine. He began publishing pulp fiction in 1970, in both the thriller / mystery and western genres, and eventually became lead writer for novels in the 'Sundance' and 'Jim Saddler' western series, as well as helming the 'Soldier of Fortune' series for Leisure Books in the 1980s. McCurtin died in 1997.

'The Slavers' is set in Sante Fe, New Mexico in 1885. Low on money and possibilities, Carmody (his first name never is disclosed in the book) is about to leave town for Colorado when he runs into an old acquaintance named Elbert Masters. Over some glasses of whiskey, Carmody learns that Masters has a law practice in Santa Fe and a zeal to right wrongs - among them, the enslavement of Indians by a local ranch owner named Thatcher McKim.

McKim doesn't take kindly to Elbert Masters and his efforts to expose McKim's unsavory business practices. Against his better judgment, Carmody decides to ally himself with Masters, and soon finds himself trading fire with McKim's hired hands. This in turn brings trouble with the local Army commander, the corpulent General Brewster Waycross. When Waycross tells Carmody it's in his best interest to leave town, Carmody refuses.......and sets in motion a violent contest with the slavers, one guaranteed to generate a high body count among the arid landscapes of New Mexico.............

'The Slavers' reads like a hardboiled detective novel repurposed to be a western. Few passages of dialogue fail to contain some sarcastic remarks; grins are sour, smiles are bitter, voices are hard (they hiss in ears), screams are like those of banshees, and Chandleresque metaphors and similes make their appearances:

Not all gunmen are short, but you meet more short ones than tall ones. Short on inches and muscle, they use a gun the way a tarantula uses his stinger.

The Rio Grande was dead ahead but the country we rode across looked like it never heard of water.

The necktie I had used to tie him with was wrinkled worse than a Yankee missionary's face.

The man with the whip unlocked the first door and bellowed like a cow giving birth. 

'The Slavers' is suffused with violence, and the latter stages of the novel venture into Splatterpunk territory, giving the book an (arguably) postmodern character that is unusual for a western novel published in 1970. Indeed, another two years were to pass before the advent of the first of the 'Edge' novels by George Gilman, and their emphasis on mayhem as a central feature of the narrative.  

The verdict ? Author McCurtin was intent on producing a revenge tale that relies on straightforward, declarative writing; economical, but competent, characterization; and villains worthy of extirpation. It's a simple but effective approach to crafting a narrative that fills all 156 pages without much in the way of surplus prose. 

'The Slavers' has a bleak tenor that signals the transition from the traditional 'black hats and white hats' western narratives of the 50s and 60s, into the morally ambiguous narratives of the 70s. It's well worth picking up.