January is Gold Medal Books Month at the PorPor Books Blog
Donald Hamilton (1916 - 2006) was a very successful writer of paperback fiction from the 1950s on into the 1980s. Twenty-eight of his 42 books were novels about the secret agent Matt Helm, but Hamilton also produced several western novels, one of these being 'Mad River,' first issued in 1956 by Collier, and later reprinted (date unknown) as Gold Medal book No. k1500.
'Mad' is set in the Arizona Territory, in the late 19th century. The protagonist is Boyd Cohoon, who, at twenty-four years of age, has just finished serving a five-year sentence at the territorial prison in Yuma. As the novel opens, Cohoon is returning to his hometown of Sombrero, which, unfortunately is under the thumb of the mining tycoon Paul Westerman.
It transpires that Cohoon's prison term is linked to a robbery that cost the life of Westerman's son Harry, and Westerman has nothing but animosity for Cohoon. And a message: get out of town, and don't come back.
Of course, Boyd Cohoon isn't scared of Westerman, nor of the town Marshall, Willie Black, who takes his marching orders from the mining magnate. Cohoon is less interested in following Westerman's dictates, and more interested in trying to figure out who bushwhacked his father and brother while Cohoon was imprisoned in Yuma.
Cohoon's also in town to settle accounts with the Paradine family. Claire Paradine once was his fiancee, but Cohoon knows that things can change with five years apart. There is her brother Francis, who shares complicity with Cohoon in past misdeeds in the arroyos and canyons outside of Sombrero. And then there is Colonel Paradine, who is accustomed to using guile, as well as wads of cash, to deter potential problems.
Sticking around Sombrero and prying into things left better left alone is a good way for Boyd Cohoon to put his life at risk from any number of parties, including the 'General,' a mysterious bandit who has been robbing the town bank with a disturbing regularity. As Cohoon makes his way around the dry and dusty streets of Sombrero, he'll need to keep an eye out for firearms leveled at him from the shadows.......
'Mad River' is a perfunctory effort from Donald Hamilton. It reads as a crime or mystery novel that was repurposed to a western. Even though the novel is only 143 pages in length, it is a sluggish read. There is no real action until page 85, and Boyd Cohoon doesn't even fire a weapon with deadly intent until page 140. Much of the narrative is taken up with dialogue passages that relate the emotional interactions of the lead characters, and the final chapters rely on contrivances to pull together various complicated intrigues, and Whodunit revelations, that are out of place in a Western novel.
While I certainly wasn't expecting 'Mad River' to have the energetic violence of a George Gilman / Terry Harkness 'Edge' novel, it's a bloodless adventure reminiscent of the Marvel westerns of the Post Comics Code-era, when the Two-Gun Kid, the Rawhide Kid, and Kid Colt all had to shoot the guns from their adversaries' hands because the Code discouraged depictions of people being struck by gunfire.
If you enjoy that sort of western, you might like 'Mad River,' but all others can pass on this vintage Gold Medal title. For the sake of fairness, however, I will point out that a review at the Vintage Pop Fictions blog found the book to be more rewarding.
