Graveyard is a Cool Name for a Horse.

For this week, I tried an experiment. I typed a titles for pulp magazines into a random list generator and then, well, randomized them. The top title was Dime Western Magazine.

I then searched for this title in the Internet Archives. The first complete issue that came up was the March 1939 issue and the first short story listed on the contents page was "All Strangers Must Die!" by Tom Roan.

If it had been a terrible story, I would have passed on writing about it. Though on rare occasions I will use this blog to vent about a terrible storytelling effort, most of the time I like to concentrate on worthwhile fiction, films and comics. Things that are worth revisiting.

"All Strangers Must Die!" is a fun read, because it generates an effective atmosphere as the protagonist (Pocotello Dave Deeth) tracks a killer into a rocky, near-inaccessible wasteland. The author grabs you with a great opening sentence--For more than eighty miles of rough trail there had been silence--and then draws you into a world of narrow ledges, steep rock-strewn slopes and thick tension.  There's also a superb action scene in which the good guys are galloping down one of those narrow ledges at breakneck speed while being shot at by some bad guys located above them.

Also, there hero's horse is named Graveyard. That's just cool.

There's also an interesting twist at the end involving the identity of the killer Deeth is pursuing and a ranch worker who takes matters into his own hands when the ranch owner doesn't realize he's about to be betrayed.

The story is flawed, though, in that it is simply too abrupt. There's enough story potential here for a novella and the 9+ pages the tale runs is too darn short to properly contain it all. The climax, in which double-crossin' varmints have to be taken care of and a ranch then defended against yet another set of double-crossin' varmints, is too rushed. Also, the supposed hero of the story--Dave Deeth--isn't given anything important to do during that climax. He's essentially just another soldier in the ranks.

It's all good, but there was potential for it to be great. "All Strangers Must Die!" is worth the few minutes it takes you to read it (you can find it HERE), but I would have gladly spend an hour or two reading a proper version of the story.