Easy Company and the Suicide Boys by John Wesley Howard

On the high plains of Wyoming Territory in the 1870’s sits Outpost Number Nine. It’s home to the fictional “Easy Company”, a unit of mounted infantry (don’t call them cavalry) in the days after Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer lost at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Easy Company is charged with maintaining the fragile peace with the Indian tribes in the area but also stand ready to fight, should that action be called for.

This is the first novel in the Easy Company series of 31 westerns written by a number of authors using the John Wesley Howard pseudonym. This time (and apparently the only time), the author is Lou Cameron, the author who brought us 'Longarm' as well as the 'Renegade' series and the 'Stringer' series among many others. The “suicide boys” of the book’s title refer to a group of young, untested, would-be Indian warriors out to prove their bravery, and their actions in the novel lead to conflicts with the outpost.

I thoroughly enjoyed this first book in the series.  The main characters of Easy Company, including the commander, his officers, 1st Sergeant, and a handful of enlisted men are all introduced as the story unfolds, as are the various leaders of the Indian tribes. An additional source of conflict arrives in the form of an IG inspector, a by-the-book man who struggles to understand why Easy Company finds it necessary to interpret the regulations creatively from time to time in order to preserve the peace.

If this first book is an indication of the quality of the entire series…well, I only have 30 more to read and I’ll enjoy each one of them.

Renegade by Ramsay Thorne (Lou Cameron)

Prolific author Lou Cameron wrote all the Renegade novels under the pseudonym “Ramsay Thorne”. These books are similar in many ways to the “Longarm” books, a character and series he created and for which he wrote over 50 books.

The first book in the Renegade series, originally published in 1979, opens with Lieutenant Richard Walker in an Army jail somewhere in the desert southwest, not far from the Mexico border, awaiting the hangman’s noose. His crime was one of compassion for some prisoners that were getting a raw deal so he let them escape. Walker also manages to escape, putting him on the run and leading him into one adventure after another as he makes his way down to Mexico and earning the moniker, “Captain Gringo”. We also meet Gaston Verrier, an ex-French Foreign Legionnaire who is now a soldier of fortune and a heavy influence on Walker’s choices. Indeed, he will be a continuing co-character throughout the series, providing much of the humor along the way.

These books are often marketed as “westerns” but most of the series takes place in Central America and are basically mercenary stories. They do, however, earn the “adult” western notation due to graphic sex scenes mixed in along with a heap-load of violent action. I will be reading more…