The Moonshine War by Elmore Leonard (Dell Paperback, 1970): Signed Edition, Book Review

The Moonshine War has for me, for a little while now, been an intriguing novel in Elmore Leonard's backlist. In a sense it's a bridge between two phases or eras of his career – between the westerns he wrote in the 1950s and the contemporaneously-set stories he wrote (with the odd western interspersed) from the late-1960s on, beginning with The Big Bounce. As such, it was a book I was keen to read, but it was also a problematic book for me, in that decent copies of both the American first edition, published by Doubleday in 1969, and the British first edition, published by Robert Hale in 1970, run into the hundreds of pounds, and are thus beyond my increasingly slender means. However, in a fortunate turn of events, my good friend Adam, proprietor of Withnail Books in Penrith, solved my problem when he recently got his hands on a stack of collectible Elmore Leonard books, among them this:

A first printing of the first American paperback edition of The Moonshine War, published by Dell in July 1970 (cover art uncredited). While not as scarce as the UK Hale edition, the Dell paperback is much more uncommon than the Doubleday first – half a dozen copies versus two dozen online; but more importantly, at least from my perspective, the Dell edition tends to be considerably cheaper than the Doubleday edition – even if your copy happens to bear Elmore Leonard's signature:

As mine does, making it very rare indeed: there are about fifteen or so signed copies of The Moonshine War for sale online across all editions, but only two of those are 1970 Dell paperbacks.

Anyway, having now read The Moonshine War, I wouldn't say it's a transitional book in terms of style or tone; with its (seemingly) naturalistic dialogue, lightly sketched but convincing characters and bare bones plot, it's very much an Elmore Leonard novel of the second phase of the writer's career, in the mould of, say, Mr. Majestyk (1974) or Valdez is Coming (1970): a story about a man – in this case deep south bootlegger Son Martin – who takes a stand partly because it's the right thing to do, partly on principle, but mostly just because. That streak of obstinacy is even wider in Son Martin than in Vincent Majestyk or Bob Valdez, however; Son manages to alienate – and even make enemies of some members of – an entire community, including his lover, hotel owner Kay Lyons, all to protect his late father's buried stash of booze from a horde of hoodlums, led initially by Son's former army buddy-turned prohibition enforcer Frank Long.

It's more in the setting that the novel can be seen as a bridge between eras: Kentucky, in the grip of the Great Depression, 1931 – not the wild west (not even geographically), but not quite the modern world either; a place and a time where a family's moonshine still was their only means of support – a situation genially tolerated by the local law, in the shape of septuagenarian sheriff Mr. Baylor. Mind you, if Justified, the TV spin-off from Elmore Leonard's Raylan Givens novels, is anything to go by, not much has changed down south in the intervening years, except that drugs have replaced booze as the local currency. And The Moonshine War is a kind of precursor to "Fire in the Hole" and the Givens television mythology – and attendant novel – that that short story begat, from the playful, probing conversations between Son and Kay, anticipating those between Raylan and Winona, to a mention of Harlan County and even a character with the name of Boyd Caswell – markedly close to Boyd Crowder.

I noted above that copies of the 1970 Dell paperback of The Moonshine War are nowhere near as pricey as either the US or UK hardback first editions; that said, I should point out that I still paid a fair amount for my one: not only is it signed, which automatically increases the price, but it's also not a common edition to come across here in the UK. But to sweeten the deal, Adam kindly threw in another signed book – a 1980 first edition of an obscure television tie-in thriller bearing an inscription which, it transpired, boasted a unique association.

The Existential Ennui Review of the Year: a Big Long List of the Books I Read in 2013

Well, thus far the Existential Ennui Review of the Year has turned into a wander rather further down memory lane than I'd intended – witness the preambulatory contextual rambles at the start of my posts on the ten best comics I read and the ten best albums I heard in 2013, which ventured far beyond 2013 to detail in tiresome fashion my personal histories with both comics and music. Rest assured, however, that there'll be none of that nonsense in this post, because we're back on more recognisable terrain here in the shape of the traditional – as in, including this post, I've rolled something similar out four years running now (twice in 2010, ridiculously) – big long list of the books I read this year.

As in previous years, the list is ordered roughly in the, er, order in which I read the books, and the title of each book links to whatever I wrote about it. Analysis (oh dear God) follows underneath the list.

Comeback (1997) by Richard Stark
Backflash (1998) by Richard Stark
Flashfire (2000) by Richard Stark
Unknown Man No. 89 (1977) by Elmore Leonard
Dominion (2012) by C. J. Sansom
Alys, Always (2012) by Harriet Lane
One Fat Englishman (1963) by Kingsley Amis
Call for the Dead (1961) by John le Carré
A Murder of Quality (1962) by John le Carré
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) by John le Carré
The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980) by Patricia Highsmith (reread)
Ripley Under Water (1991) by Patricia Highsmith (reread)
Ghostman (2013) by Roger Hobbs
My Enemy's Enemy (1962) by Kingsley Amis
Life After Life (2013) by Kate Atkinson
Dr. Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks (1964) by David Whitaker
A Delicate Truth (2013) by John le Carré
Flush as May (1963) by P. M. Hubbard
From Here to Maternity (1955) by Peter Rabe
Out of Sight (1996) by Elmore Leonard
Cuba Libre (1998) by Elmore Leonard
Get Shorty (1990) by Elmore Leonard (reread)
The Hunted (1977) by Elmore Leonard
Swag (1976) by Elmore Leonard
Stick (1983) by Elmore Leonard (reread)
LaBrava (1983) by Elmore Leonard
Road Dogs (2009) by Elmore Leonard
Valdez is Coming (1970) by Elmore Leonard
Gold Coast (1980) by Elmore Leonard
Fifty-Two Pickup (1974) by Elmore Leonard
Be Shot for Sixpence (1956) by Michael Gilbert
Out on the Rim (1987) by Ross Thomas
Deep Water (1957) by Patricia Highsmith
The Switch (1978) by Elmore Leonard
Count Not the Cost (1967) by Ian Mackintosh
A Magnum for Schneider (1969) by James Mitchell
The Man Who Sold Death (1964) by James Munro
A Slaying in September (1967) by Ian Mackintosh
The Sandbaggers (1978) by Ian Mackintosh
Our Man in Camelot (1975) by Anthony Price

I make that forty books in total, which is twenty-four fewer than I managed in 2012 and twenty-nine fewer than I managed in 2010, although only eight fewer than 2011. There is, of course, a very good reason for this – one which I trust and fervently hope will continue to have an impact on my reading for many years to come – and we should also bear in mind that I read quite a lot of comics too, so all things considered, it's really not a bad total. Obviously it's not quite the end of the year yet, and I do have a further four(!) books on the go, but I'd be surprised if I finish any of them before 2013 breathes its last. And even if I do, who's to know apart from me? It'll just give me a headstart on next year's total (which I suspect I'll need).

So, what can we determine from the 2013 list? Well, almost all of the books I read were novels, and even the two that weren't – Kingsley Amis's My Enemy's Enemy and Peter Rabe's From Here to Maternity – are still essentially fiction, the former a short story collection and the latter a fictionalised illustrated account of Rabe's wife's pregnancy. Just three were published this year – Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, Roger Hobbs's Ghostman and John le Carré's A Delicate Truth – and a further two – Harriet Lane's Alys, Always and C. J. Sansom's Dominion – were published into paperback this year (having been published in hardback last year) and so could still be considered 'new'. The rest were published across the preceding six decades – two in the 2000s; six in the 1990s; five in the 1980s; eight in the 1970s; eleven in the 1960s; and three in the 1950s. Almost all, however, were 'new' to me, with the exceptions of Patricia Highsmith's The Boy Who Followed Ripley and Ripley Under Water and Elmore Leonard's Get Shorty and Stick, which I'd read before.

If we were to divide the books into categories, twenty are what you could loosely term crime fiction; eleven are to a greater or lesser degree spy fiction; five are I suppose what you'd call literary and/or historical fiction; two are westerns; one is science fiction; and one would be categorised as humour. The author I read the most in 2013, appositely given that he passed away this year, is Elmore Leonard, by a wide margin: thirteen novels in total (including the two rereads). His nearest rival isn't, in terms of raw numbers, any kind of rival at all really – John le Carré, of whose novels I read four this year – while I read three books apiece by Richard Stark (alias Donald E. Westlake, who was my most-read author in 2012 and 2010), Patricia Highsmith (again including two rereads), James Mitchell (including one written under the pen name James Munro) and Ian Mackintosh, and two by Kingsley Amis.

Fascinating stuff, I'm sure you'll agree, but as the more attentive souls among you may have noticed, it tells us little to nothing about the books themselves. For that I'd suggest following the links to read whatever piffle I posted about each of them. And if you're curious as to which books I'd pick as my ten best of the year, all will be revealed in the final post not only in the Existential Ennui Review of the Year, but of the year.

Stand on the Saber (Last Stand at Saber River / Lawless River) by Elmore Leonard (Corgi, 1960)

This penultimate Elmore Leonard paperback – nearly done now – dates from the first phase of Leonard's career, i.e. 1951–1961, when he was writing nothing but westerns:

Last Stand at Saber River, the fourth of five western novels Leonard published over that period, issued as a paperback original in the States by Dell in 1959. Except, as you can see, this isn't that edition: it's the first British paperback edition, retitled as Stand on the Saber and published by Corgi in 1960 (Corgi #SW847). In fact the novel's title was changed twice for British publication: Robert Hale published it in hardback under the title Lawless River in 1959 (you can see a facsimile of the Hale dust jacket, along with jackets for others of Leonard's early westerns, at Facsimile Dust Jackets LLC), and Corgi changed it again the year after.

Copies of the Corgi edition are almost as scarce as the Hale edition – there are presently two Corgi paperbacks versus one Hale hardback on AbeBooks – but prices couldn't be more different between the two: less than a fiver for the Corgi; over two grand for the Hale. So you can see why I went for the Corgi edition – that and the rather nice cover artwork, which I've unfortunately been unable to identify, despite asking a couple of paperback experts. (A partial signature – "HARRY" in capital letters – is visible bottom right of the artwork, which prompted one of the experts to suggest it might be by American artist Harry J. Schaare, but Schaare tended to sign his work with his surname, lowercase, so I remain unconvinced.)

But the main reason I bought the book is I was curious to see how it compares to Leonard's later western, the terrific Valdez is Coming (1970), and indeed to his work in general in that second phase of his career from 1969 onwards, when he returned to writing fiction after an enforced break (the western market having pretty much dried up by the end of the '50s). Answer being, not especially favourably.

Oh it's not a bad novel, by any stretch of the imagination. The story of Paul Cable, a Confederate soldier who, having been injured towards the end of the Civil War, returns with his family to his homestead in the Saber River valley to find it overrun by a Union gang, it's a decent enough western, moves at a reasonable clip and has its fair share of tense standoffs and shootouts. But it's certainly not the equal of Valdez is Coming, nor of the non-western novels Leonard penned when he resumed his writing career (The Big Bounce, Mr. Majestyk, Fifty-Two Pickup, etc.). Though there are hints of the Leonard to come – notably the way he makes the ostensible villains of the piece at least as compelling, if not more so, than Cable – it lacks the economy, the subtlety, the depth of later Leonard – that wry, supple prose and ear for the vernacular in dialogue.

Leonard himself admitted as much in a 2009 Goodreads interview. "When I read those [early westerns]," he told the interviewer, "I would definitely say my style has changed. I think it started with one of the last westerns – I was trying to get a little more humour in it, but also to be more spare in the writing. [Prior to that] I was using pronouns and making a lot of noise with the writing." He was also, at least on the evidence of Last Stand at Saber River, using adverbs – something that would become strictly verboten post-1969, as outlined in Leonard's celebrated 10 Rules of Writing – number 4, to be precise, "Never use an adverb to modify the verb 'said'... he admonished gravely." Which of course follows Rule number 3: "Never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue." Although if Last Stand at Saber River is any indication, Leonard learned his own lesson early there.

Right then. Just one final Elmore Leonard paperback to come: the last of his novels to be published as a paperback original in the States...

Valdez is Coming by Elmore Leonard (Gold Medal, 1970, Frank McCarthy Cover Art): Book Review

NB: A Friday Forgotten Book.

Let's begin the paperback segment of this seemingly endless series of posts on Elmore Leonard with a western:

Valdez is Coming, published as a paperback original in the States in October 1970 by Fawcett/Gold Medal, cover art by Frank McCarthy. The copy seen here, which I acquired from Alan White Fine Books, is the true American first edition, as evidenced by the 60 cent cover price and the presence on the back of a pair of stills from the 1971 Burt Lancaster-starring movie adaptation:

Which are missing on later printings. So now you know. (In fact the earliest edition of the novel is the British Robert Hale hardback, published in 1969 under a terrible photographic dust jacket, but seeing as the scant few copies of it available online are hideously expensive – at least a grand for a decent one – it's unlikely I'll ever get my hands on one.)  

Valdez is Coming is one of two Leonard novels Gold Medal published when the author resumed his (fiction) writing career in the late 1960s (the other being 1969's The Big Bounce), but it actually started life almost a decade before: the first chapter of the novel was originally a short story, "Only Good Ones", which appeared in Western Roundup at the tail end of the first phase of Leonard's career (when he was writing nothing but westerns) in 1961. (A tip of the hat to Vintage Hardboiled Reads for that info.) Stylistically, though, it's recognisably the work of the Leonard who penned the likes of The Big Bounce and Mr. Majestyk and The Hunted in the late 1960s and throughout the '70s, rather than the Leonard who penned the early westerns: lean, no waste, and with a distinct lack of modifying adverbs.

Certainly Leonard himself thinks so. In a 2009 Goodreads interview he agreed that his style had changed and that "it started with one of the last westerns – I was trying to get a little more humor in it, but also to be more spare in the writing", adding: "[Previously] I was using pronouns and making a lot of noise with the writing." That same year he told The Barnes and Noble Review's James Mustich: "...it was when I was writing Valdez is Coming, I began to see something a little different, that I could get into the character not simply as a hero, but as an individual. That helped me. From then on, I looked more at my characters as human beings, not just this guy wearing a badge, and so on." He also told mystery novelist Jean Henry Mead in a separate interview that he felt Valdez is Coming was his best western novel – a view endorsed by George Pelecanos (among others), who wrote that it was his "favorite Leonard novel, a perfect piece of lean, evocative writing, one hundred and thirty six pages (my Bantam paperback edition) [note: 156 pages in the Gold Medal edition, excluding prelims] of prose containing not one wasted word".

Of the Leonard novels I've read, I wouldn't say Valdez is Coming was my favourite, but it is bloody good. The opening chapter is – as you'd expect, given its origins – essentially a complete story in itself, centring on a standoff at a shack in the scrub country outside the town of Lanoria – a standoff which ends when Bob Valdez, the Mexican constable of Lanoria, is forced to kill the black man mistakenly identified by horse trader and gunrunner Frank Tanner as a murderer and army deserter. Thereafter, figuring Tanner and the other Lanoria grandees owe the man's pregnant Native American widow restitution, Valdez goes to see Tanner and asks him for money; Tanner's response is to have his men, including his segundo (second-in-command), beat Valdez and send him on his way. And when the stubborn Valdez comes back again, he's dealt with even more harshly (the Gold Medal cover art will give you an idea how harshly).

That Valdez's subsequent actions encompass the kidnapping of Tanner's woman, Gay Erin, and the killing of so many men it's hard to keep track (although Valdez does) – and that they in turn mean hardship for his horsebreaker friend, Diego Luz and his family – might lead those unfamiliar with the novel to believe that it is in essence a straightforward tale of revenge. But there's much more to the novel than that. Valdez's motivations – indeed the motivations of all of the major characters, however lightly sketched – are complex and not easily definable, touching on themes of, variously, justice, faith, mortality, hope, determination, friendship, companionship – even, at one stage, alcoholism (a subject Leonard, who around this time was drinking heavily, would return to in 1977's Unknown Man No. 89) and domestic violence. As Leonard puts it at the start of chapter two: "A man can be in two different places and he will be two different men. Maybe if you think of more places he will be more men, but two is enough for now."

And all this in 156 pages – or 136 if you're George Pelecanos – "of lean, evocative writing". In fact, compare Valdez is Coming to some of the westerns Leonard penned in the 1950s and you'd almost think they were the work of two different writers – as we'll discover, in the next Elmore Leonard post.

Cuba Libre by Elmore Leonard (Viking, 1998): Book Review

The generally accepted narrative of Elmore Leonard's writing career is that from 1951 (when he sold his first short story) to 1961 he wrote nothing but westerns, and when he returned to writing fiction in 1969 after an enforced break (the western market having dried up) he abandoned westerns in favour of crime fiction. But that broad outline is only part of the story. In truth, Leonard never completely turned his back on the western form: he continued to pen out-and-out westerns into the late 1970s (Valdez is Coming, 1970; Forty Lashes Less One, 1972; Gunsights, 1979), and it could be argued that even some of his contemporaneously set novels are westerns in all but name (Mr. Majestyk; The Hunted maybe; the Raylan Givens stories). And then there are those novels that fall somewhere in between – historical works like The Moonshine War (1969), The Hot Kid (2005) and this book:

Cuba Libre, published in 1998 and seen here in its British Viking edition, which sports the same Chip Kidd-designed dust jacket as the American Delacorte edition. Set in Cuba in 1898 on the eve of the Spanish-American War and the accompanying Cuban struggle for independence, it follows former bank robber Ben Tyler and his friend Charlie Burke as they transport a string of horses to the island – said horses being but a cover for a shipment of guns intended for the Cuban revolutionaries. Predictably, the pair soon run into trouble, both at the hands of the Guardia Civil and in particular one officer, Lionel Tavalera, and with an American planter, Roland Boudreaux. Meanwhile, in Havana harbour, seagoing marine Virgil Webster embarks on his own parallel adventure, as the ship he's aboard, the USS Maine, is sunk following an explosion – an event which will propel America into conflict with Spain.

Leonard weaves fact into fiction throughout Cuba Libre, blurring the lines between the two to suit his purposes. For example, although the Maine did indeed sink off the coast of Havana in 1898 with the loss of 266 lives, it seems at least as likely that it was caused by the spontaneous combustion of the ship's coal bunker than by, as Leonard suggests, a Spanish mine. But the author uses the disaster to shape Virgil Webster's story: suspecting he knows the truth, the Spanish authorities throw him in jail, in the process flinging him into the path of Ben Tyler. For Leonard, characters are always paramount; rather than slavishly recount the major engagements of the war and the revolution, in his hands the upheaval becomes a backdrop to the self-serving agendas and shifting allegiances of Tyler, Webster, Tavalera and Boudreaux, as well as Boudreaux's mistress, Amelia Brown, and Cuban wrangler Victor Fuentes – not all of whom, buffeted as they are by the events unfolding around them, will make it out alive.

Mind you, I've yet to read an Elmore Leonard book where there isn't at least one death, and usually more than one – and so it is here (there's a particularly shocking and unexpected killing a third of the way in). And with a fair smattering of duels and gunfights, prison escapes and horseback pursuits, ambushes, double-crosses and the tantalising prospect of stolen loot, despite the historical trappings the novel stands revealed as what it truly is: a western, plain and simple.

A couple of asides before we move on to the next Elmore Leonard novel. Courtesy of a September 1996 New Yorker article by Alec Wilkinson (kindly sent to me by Book Glutton; I'm not a New Yorker subscriber), I learned that much of Leonard's research for Cuba Libre came from one book: Our Islands and Their People, Volume I (1899), a copy of which was found by Leonard's researcher, Gregg Sutter (who these days also runs the official Elmore Leonard website), in a used bookstore on the way to see the author to discuss the novel. (When he saw the book, Leonard – who at that point was only nine pages into Cuba Libre and was having trouble with the dialogue of the period – reportedly exclaimed, "Oh, my God! Oh! Look at this!" then added: "This book, I can't believe it. A picture book of the period. This is all I need... I can get everything I need out of this." To which a despondent Sutter replied, "Don't say that. That's the last thing I want to hear.") And in yet another example of the interrelated nature of Leonard's characters across his canon, Virgil Webster is later revealed as having had a son – lawman Carl Webster, star of The Hot Kid, Comfort to the Enemy (2006) and Up in Honey's Room (2007), the latter of which also boasts an appearance by Virgil.

Anyway, seeing as we're on the subject of Leonard's westerns, let's have a look at one of his best next: 1970's Valdez is Coming, which kicks off a run of posts on Elmore Leonard paperbacks...