[sinclairfan]

The "Rockabye County" series, with Alice F ayde as a blonde Texas sheriff, is very good.

[maine516]

diane - Just wondering how many JT books you've read.  From what I've seen and counted, he could have somewhere between 125 to 150 books.  I've collected 50-55 so far.  Of these, I've approx. a dozen I haven't read yet (I built up an inventory).   I'm hoping to get another 50 to 75 books, but trying to weed out in advance if possible those without catfights and the ones that are basically the same books with different titles.  In addition to providing reviews of what I read, I've listed here the books I have without catfights.  By chance, did you keep any type of list from what you read?  Those you liked, those you didn't like?

[maine516]

Most of you have probably read this one, but for those who haven't, I just finished J.T.'s Ladies.  It's a collection of 6 separate stories (more like situations or single events in some cases where the story is only about 25 pages long) featuring in this order: Amanda Tweedle, Dawn Drummond-Clayton, Alice Fayde, Betty Hardin, Belle Boyd, and Calamity Jane (though this one's more about Agnes Hickok).

There are 2 good catfights: Dawn Drummond-Clayton vs Katya Viskovsky.  I'm not sure of the timeframe, maybe 1950's or 1960's, and it takes place in the jungles of Africa.  The fight actually takes place in a large tent, while other fighting and shooting is going on outside.  There is some nice build up to the fight as the 2 women had previously competed in gymnastics.  The fight is a good even struggle with both women becoming topless during the struggle.  It runs about 3 pages in description and I'd rate it as better than average. 

The other mentionable fight is a topless boxing match between Battlin' Binnie Gates and Agnes Hickok.  There's plenty of animosity between the 2 women leading up to the fight itself.  In addition to starting out topless, they use smaller 6 or 4 ounce gloves rather than much larger boxing gloves.  While, I'm not a fan of ring boxing as an erotic form of cat fighting, this one is better than others I've read and I'd give this a better than average rating as well.  Plus it's description lasts the better part of 8 pages.

[CoffeeMug]

Got Rapido Clint Strikes Back, skimmed through it.  Pass.  One single-punch fight (and a trip/threat later), plus so far as I could tell, the plot didn't exist at all.  It looked like a bad short story stretched to 250 pages.

[sinclairfan]

That's like a Fall Guy episode without Heather Thomas.

[maine516]

Thanks for the heads up re RCSB.  It was on my future purchase list.

[sinclairfan]

Anyone else find it strange in the "Diamonds, Emeralds, Cards and Colts" long Belle Starr fight that neither Belle nor Irene say anything to each other during the entire fight?

[maine516]

I had to put down JT's books for a couple of weeks to do some studying.  I'm back reading now and just finished 2 books - More JT's Ladies and The Deputies.

More JT's Ladies has 4 separate stories featuring Annie Singing Bear, Rita Yarborough, Dawn Drummond-Clayton and Alice Fayde.  Only the story with Rita has a catfight - and it's very good.  It's a hotel room fight with a blonde named Cora-Ann, and the fight from beginning to end runs almost 10 pages!  There are no catfights in the other 3 stories, other than a very brief one-punch affair in the episode featuring Dawn.  The story with Dawn is full of JT's political views on "grubby liberal-intellectuals" who all smoke pot and become craze-induced killers.  It's too much to take really.  While not as prevalent, his views on the evils of all narcotics carries on in the story with Alice.

The Deputies has very good catfight between Alice Fayde and Helen Whitsall, a female wrestler.  This fight also takes place in a hotel room, and it's another lengthy affair running 10 plus pages (although the copy I have is a large print version).  The plot revolves around finding the killer of a young, beautiful female wrestler so there are plenty of references to female wrestling throughout the book.  I thought the story overall was pretty boring though, and it has more of JT's anti-narcotics views and apparent fondness for the NRA. 

JT may have been somewhat of a bigot, possibly a racist, and an ultra-conservative.  My guess is he probably hated Elvis and The Beatles.

I've just ordered The Professional Killers and Trouble Trail.  Both supposedly have excellent catfights.  I'm also currently reading Old Moccasins On The Trail which does have a catfight midway through the book.  I'll provide more info when I've finished these books.

I'm looking forward to returning to reading more of JT's earlier westerns.  They're more interesting and fun to read, and they don't have his right-wing political views so obviously and heavily interjected into the stories.



 

[coachzzz]

I strongly agree with you on both the Rita vs. Cora-Ann fight and the Alice Fayde vs. Helen battle.  I only recently read both (in the last few months) and they are among J T Edson's best scenes.  Their length and back-and-forth nature makes them highly enjoyable. 

[maine516]

I finished Old Moccasins On The Trail.  There is a nice little gem of a catfight between a fiery Mexican cantina girl, Florencia Cazador, and a white American girl, Mavis Dearington, who has been kidnapped by Mexican bandits.  The fight starts in a bedroom upstairs, but when it is discovered, the girls are brought down to the cantina and are allowed to continue their fight.  The girls are both around 20 and physically fit, which of course leads to a back and forth struggle.  The Mexican girl becomes fully naked and the American girl just short of that.  They continue fighting in that state.  When I first got the book, I skimmed it but only came across the first part of the fight.  There are several pages between the first and second parts of the fight, so I missed the second part in skimming.  It was a nice surprise to come across it in reading the book.  You can tell early on in the book too that there will most likely be a fight later as there are several hints and indications of a future confrontation.

I just received The Professional Killers, with Alice Fayde.  This one has the fight where Alice gets out of uniform and drives to the apartment of the bad girl, with the definite intention of confronting the other woman.  They fight, but I was disappointed to find the description is only a page or so long.  I was expecting a lengthy affair, like the fight she had in The Deputies.

[sinclairfan]

I agree with you on the odd length of Alice's Professional Killers fight.  Also, if memory serves correctly, her opponent in that fight ends up getting shot for no apparent reason ( not by Alice) a few pages along.  Alice Fayde is a good example of how it's harder to come up with good catfight situations for law-women than for outlaws.

[coachzzz]

I also agree on the Professional Killers--great build-up, mediocre fight scene. 

Perhaps the issue with "law-women" is that they are presumed to have some level of training, so you must have an opponent with relatively equal training in some sense to make it realistic.   That was part of the problem with the Professional Killers (her opponent has no physical combat training), but is no problem in the Deputies (since her opponent is a pro wrestler and can meet her on an even playing field). 

[maine516]

I think you are exactly right about the "law-women" having a training advantage, especially in the time frame of these particular books.  If they were from more recent times, the bad girls could be assassins or women who were also likely to have some training and be physically fit.

One more reason why I'm back searching the early westerns - more likely to find even match ups with tough, but un-trained women.  I'm hoping to find another Slip Gun gem that no one's found yet.  I'm not sure how likely that is though since I've gone through 50 plus books to date so the odds are starting to diminish.

[maine516]

I've finished reading (vs skimming) The Professional Killers.  The story line build-up to the fight between Alice and Marla was so well done that it gave the expectation of a long, hard fought fight to come between the 2 women.  They had fought initially in high school and harbored a long-standing, hate-filled rivalry.  They really wanted to fight each other when they meet again years later.  Despite Alice's law-woman training, she was so filled with anger at Marla, she was more than willing to fight her woman-to-woman in a straight-out brawl.  The fight certainly starts out that way and is very promising, until very quickly in the short description, in the middle of this intense fight, Alice suddenly realizes she's a law-woman and changes tactics to make use of her training so that neither of them is seriously injured.  Bummer turn of events.  There is even a line saying they would have just continued fighting as they were until both passed out from exhaustion - too bad it just didn't go that way!

In the end, Alice does shoot Marla during a gun battle in a warehouse with her partner (Brad) and the two professional killers they've been looking for throughout the book.  Marla dies a couple of days later in a hospital but not before confessing things to Alice.  In an unsuspected twist at the very end, it turns out Alice and Marla are cousins (Alice admits this to Brad as she explains to him Marla's real original name).

Now, if I were re-writing the ending, I'd have Alice and Marla alone having a chase and gun battle scene in the warehouse.  They both run out of bullets, then challenge each other to fight woman-to-woman with no use of Alice's special training.  Being alone, knowing Marla is guilty and that a fight is inevitable, Alice is now more than willing to settle her long hated rivalry with Marla.  Now it's a long, hard fight that ranges all around the warehouse, crashing into boxes, tackling each other, falling over boxes, bear-hugging each other as they bounce off walls and move into corners standing-up, maybe even fight into and out of again an office area - of course stripping each other almost nude in the process.  That's the kind of fight they should have had, based on the build-up and the deep hated rivalry they had.  Where is the person who could right this finish?

 

[sinclairfan]

It was impossible for Alice and Marla to have a straight-up fight--Alice's badge gives her the power to put Marla in jail.