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| Sphere 1973 UK edition |
First Published: 1973
File size/Pages: 1085KB / 158pp
Ebook Publisher: Piccadilly Publishing
Ebook Date: November 2012
Send Angel was a pleasure to read from start to end. It felt like the perfect antidote to the ultra-violent Westerns typical of the 1970's. Slightly longer in page length. An interesting central character that isn't bent on enacting bloody revenge on every person of questionable virtues he meets because of the voilent murder his wife, mother, father, or children. A good cast of supporting characters to accompany our hero. And most importantly, a decent plot that developes nicely and is allowed some room to develop.
I had planned to read the first of the Angel books, but got a little confused about their reading order, and it seems I ended up reading either the second or third book in the nine book series, Send Angel. I say "either" because according to Piccadilly Publishing's Ebook list, Send is the second novel, but according to the U.S. publication order it is the third? Author Frederick Nolan (writing as Frederick H. Christian) lists this it as the second on his website, so I'm going to stick with that principle.
Nolan hails from Liverpool, England. Born in 1931, he moved to London in the 60's and was a reader and editor for numerous publishing houses, most significantly with Corgi. It was through this association that the opportunity to write the follow-up books to Oliver Strange's Sudden series of books came about. This gave rise to the pen name he used for the majority of his Western fiction, Frederick H. Christian. The Sudden continuation books were incredibly popular selling over a million paperbacks.
The boom in Western fiction in the 70's, and the success of U.K. based writers making a reputation with their own ultra-stylised brand of stories that pushed the genre into new directions came to the attention of publishers across the Atlantic. Nolan describes it best himself;
The first book was called Find Angel and was published in 1973 (I have a copy of the Sphere first edition that is dated 1973, as is Send Angel, although Nolan seems to think it was 1974, perhaps they were released in the tail end of '73?). Nolan turned out another eight titles in the folliwng three years.
The second book has our hero, Frank Angel, dispatched to the town of Daranga and its' nearby Fort Daranga to investigate the deaths of three Government men who have been looking into a particular spate of rustling in the area. It seems that targetted ranches are suffering from the dissapearance of cattle from their ranges, and unscrupulous market-controlled prices at the Daranga stores, which are controlled by the local partnership of two businessman named Birch and Reynolds. This, plus reports of Indian reservations being offered cut price beef by local cowboys had made the Attorney-General highly suspicious. With the deaths of three of his men, he feels it is time for Angel to step in.
The first thing Angel does when he arrives is to visit the Army post of Fort Daranga. A visit to the merchants' store results in an encounter with two local villians, Boot and Mill. Picking a fight with a drunken soldier they find themselves on the end of a whipping from our Washington undercover agent. Making friends with the soldier, Blackstone, Angel stays the night in the fort. In the morning his exploits have come to the attention of the commanding officer, Colonel Thompson. He is a sorry specimen of a man, an overweight, drunken sop who blusters his way through warning Frank not to cause further trouble and eventually orders him to leave with an Army escort, and the threat of being shot on sight should he attempt to return. Angel's suspicions of widespread corruption amongst officials seem to be panning out.
He is accompanied out of the Fort, quite deliberately in the opposite direction from the town of Daranga, his intended destination. Very soon he realises he has been set up for an attempt on his life. From now on he has to rely on his wits and his fighting spirit to survive the conspiritors efforts to keep him away from their profitable operation.
As I said at the start; I thoroughly enjoyed this story. Nolan is a very competent writer, with a sytle that is both fresh and familiar at the same time. He doesn't step into the ultra voilent style of action like some of his British contemporaries. It's there when needed to make an impact, but never overused. He displays an impressive knowledge of the era and the life of the people living in the times (Nolan became an authority on the history of the American frontier, and is a founder of The English Westerners' Society).
The biggest positive I took from this paperback was the way in which Nolan plots the story. This one doesn't feel like a one-idea book stetched out to fill a page count. It flows quite naturally, with a few surprises along the way and a cast of characters that don't feel too steroetypical. It was quite a change to read a Western with a central character who isn't out for revenge or bloodlust. To be fair, Frank Angel doesn't get much in terms of range here, but at least you get the feeling he is a thinking man with a strategy, rather than a bull in a china shop.
I especially enjoyed the menace of an enemy pulling the strings from the wings, rather than an obvious black-hatted gunslinger hanging out at the saloon or a dollar-hungry ranch owner with a large purse full of gold hiring an unending line of villians. Saying this however, we also get a very memorable baddie along those lines in the form of Larkin, a professional killer who gets a decent amount of page space from Nolan - it was great to read the action from his point of view.
I'd recommend Send Angel. I will be investing more time with Nolan's creation hoping the series maintains this quality. Currently available in eBook from Piccadilly Publishing.
Ebook Publisher: Piccadilly Publishing
Ebook Date: November 2012
Send Angel was a pleasure to read from start to end. It felt like the perfect antidote to the ultra-violent Westerns typical of the 1970's. Slightly longer in page length. An interesting central character that isn't bent on enacting bloody revenge on every person of questionable virtues he meets because of the voilent murder his wife, mother, father, or children. A good cast of supporting characters to accompany our hero. And most importantly, a decent plot that developes nicely and is allowed some room to develop.
I had planned to read the first of the Angel books, but got a little confused about their reading order, and it seems I ended up reading either the second or third book in the nine book series, Send Angel. I say "either" because according to Piccadilly Publishing's Ebook list, Send is the second novel, but according to the U.S. publication order it is the third? Author Frederick Nolan (writing as Frederick H. Christian) lists this it as the second on his website, so I'm going to stick with that principle.
Nolan hails from Liverpool, England. Born in 1931, he moved to London in the 60's and was a reader and editor for numerous publishing houses, most significantly with Corgi. It was through this association that the opportunity to write the follow-up books to Oliver Strange's Sudden series of books came about. This gave rise to the pen name he used for the majority of his Western fiction, Frederick H. Christian. The Sudden continuation books were incredibly popular selling over a million paperbacks.
The boom in Western fiction in the 70's, and the success of U.K. based writers making a reputation with their own ultra-stylised brand of stories that pushed the genre into new directions came to the attention of publishers across the Atlantic. Nolan describes it best himself;
...As a result I was commissioned by Pinnacle Books in New York and Sphere in London to write a new series, this time featuring a hero who had more in common with James Bond than Wyatt Earp. His name was Frank Angel and he was different for another reason: his name was that of a real Presidential investigator, Frank Warner Angel (1845-1906) , who was a troubleshooter for the Attorney-General of the United States. He was sent to New Mexico in 1878 by the Department of Justice to investigate the murder of English rancher and businessman John H. Tunstall and a gaggle of politicians, one of whom was the Governor of New Mexico, Samuel B. Axtell. No prizes, then, for guessing where the idea came from.
They weren't, they aren't Great Literature, of course. No Piccadilly cowboy ever expected to be compared with the great American western writers who were around then -- Jack Schaefer, Ernest Haycox, Dorothy M. Johnson, Elmore Leonard, Luke Short, Alan LeMay, Paul Horgan, Will Henry, Wayne D. Overholser and half a hundred others. But we tried as hard as we could to emulate them, in the process sometimes going so far as to create what the French call hommage.Taken from Nolan's website http://www.fredericknolan.com/
The first book was called Find Angel and was published in 1973 (I have a copy of the Sphere first edition that is dated 1973, as is Send Angel, although Nolan seems to think it was 1974, perhaps they were released in the tail end of '73?). Nolan turned out another eight titles in the folliwng three years.
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| Piccadilly Publishing eBook cover |
The first thing Angel does when he arrives is to visit the Army post of Fort Daranga. A visit to the merchants' store results in an encounter with two local villians, Boot and Mill. Picking a fight with a drunken soldier they find themselves on the end of a whipping from our Washington undercover agent. Making friends with the soldier, Blackstone, Angel stays the night in the fort. In the morning his exploits have come to the attention of the commanding officer, Colonel Thompson. He is a sorry specimen of a man, an overweight, drunken sop who blusters his way through warning Frank not to cause further trouble and eventually orders him to leave with an Army escort, and the threat of being shot on sight should he attempt to return. Angel's suspicions of widespread corruption amongst officials seem to be panning out.
He is accompanied out of the Fort, quite deliberately in the opposite direction from the town of Daranga, his intended destination. Very soon he realises he has been set up for an attempt on his life. From now on he has to rely on his wits and his fighting spirit to survive the conspiritors efforts to keep him away from their profitable operation.
The biggest positive I took from this paperback was the way in which Nolan plots the story. This one doesn't feel like a one-idea book stetched out to fill a page count. It flows quite naturally, with a few surprises along the way and a cast of characters that don't feel too steroetypical. It was quite a change to read a Western with a central character who isn't out for revenge or bloodlust. To be fair, Frank Angel doesn't get much in terms of range here, but at least you get the feeling he is a thinking man with a strategy, rather than a bull in a china shop.I especially enjoyed the menace of an enemy pulling the strings from the wings, rather than an obvious black-hatted gunslinger hanging out at the saloon or a dollar-hungry ranch owner with a large purse full of gold hiring an unending line of villians. Saying this however, we also get a very memorable baddie along those lines in the form of Larkin, a professional killer who gets a decent amount of page space from Nolan - it was great to read the action from his point of view.
I'd recommend Send Angel. I will be investing more time with Nolan's creation hoping the series maintains this quality. Currently available in eBook from Piccadilly Publishing.
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