I have been reading Edgar Rice Burroughs since I was a teenager back in the 1960s. I've always considered him one of my favorite authors and I have loved his Tarzan, Mars, and Pellucidar series. I have a large collection of most of his books in hardcover. I had never read Bandit of Hell's Bend but after reading a good review by another Goodreads member, I decided to pull it off my shelf and dig in!
I actually really enjoyed this one. This is one of only a few Westerns that Burroughs wrote and although he was a huge success writing adventure and sci-fi/fantasy novels, I think he could have also been successful as a Western writer in the vein of Zane Grey and William McLeod Raine if he had focused only on that genre.
Bandit is a very typical Western of its time. It was originally published in the pulp magazine, Argosy All-Story Weekly in 1924 and then in book form in 1925.
It is the story of a rancher and gold mine owner named Henders in Arizona with a beautiful daughter named Diana who is loved and admired by all the ranch hands. The foreman of the ranch, Bull, is betrayed by another rancher named Hal Colby who longed for his job. Hal purposely got Bull drunk so he would be fired by Henders. Colby takes over as foreman while Bull is thought to be a bandit who has been robbing the gold shipments at a pass called "Hell's Bend". The robber wears a black silk scarf and mask and is know as the "Black Coyote". Later in the story, Diana's cousin, Lillian, and her attorney arrive at the ranch and insist that the cousin is the heir to all of it after Diana's father and Lillian's father both die. So will Diana be able to save the ranch? Is Bull the notorious bandit, the Black Coyote? If not, then who is?
The novel as usual for the time was really a romance with Diana's love interests and the cowboys who want her. But it is also full of action, especially the last part of the novel. It is also filled with some very colorful side characters including the ranch hands (one is a singing cowboy), the Chinese cook, the Mexican bandit, and the renegade Apaches. And as typical for the time, the novel did have a few racial epithets describing the Mexicans and Chinese and the Indians were of course bad and should be shot on sight. But this was very prevalent for novels written in the early twentieth century. Overall, I enjoyed this and recommend it. I have a couple of Burroughs' other Western novels that I also hope to read at some point soon. I also need to read his Venus novels which I have never gotten around to. So much to read, so little time!
I actually really enjoyed this one. This is one of only a few Westerns that Burroughs wrote and although he was a huge success writing adventure and sci-fi/fantasy novels, I think he could have also been successful as a Western writer in the vein of Zane Grey and William McLeod Raine if he had focused only on that genre.
Bandit is a very typical Western of its time. It was originally published in the pulp magazine, Argosy All-Story Weekly in 1924 and then in book form in 1925.
It is the story of a rancher and gold mine owner named Henders in Arizona with a beautiful daughter named Diana who is loved and admired by all the ranch hands. The foreman of the ranch, Bull, is betrayed by another rancher named Hal Colby who longed for his job. Hal purposely got Bull drunk so he would be fired by Henders. Colby takes over as foreman while Bull is thought to be a bandit who has been robbing the gold shipments at a pass called "Hell's Bend". The robber wears a black silk scarf and mask and is know as the "Black Coyote". Later in the story, Diana's cousin, Lillian, and her attorney arrive at the ranch and insist that the cousin is the heir to all of it after Diana's father and Lillian's father both die. So will Diana be able to save the ranch? Is Bull the notorious bandit, the Black Coyote? If not, then who is?
The novel as usual for the time was really a romance with Diana's love interests and the cowboys who want her. But it is also full of action, especially the last part of the novel. It is also filled with some very colorful side characters including the ranch hands (one is a singing cowboy), the Chinese cook, the Mexican bandit, and the renegade Apaches. And as typical for the time, the novel did have a few racial epithets describing the Mexicans and Chinese and the Indians were of course bad and should be shot on sight. But this was very prevalent for novels written in the early twentieth century. Overall, I enjoyed this and recommend it. I have a couple of Burroughs' other Western novels that I also hope to read at some point soon. I also need to read his Venus novels which I have never gotten around to. So much to read, so little time!
