Starlight Rider

Perhaps not the best Ernest Haycox novel, but surely one well worth reading more than once. The scenario, the plot, of this book is very traditional--what I happen to like--Hugh Tracy returns to Antelope after having been wounded and driven obut by Tad Shadrow and his army of renegades who want to control the country. And yes, this book was published in Collier's magazine before becoming a book, so it had to meet certain editorial demands--serial novels they were called, and Ernest Haycox didn't necessarily like having to work with such boundaries, so as he gained reputation he deliberately stretched these boundaries with every successive book as much as he could. These types of work do have a formula, and that does not make them bad or in any way lessen the quality of the work. Ernest Haycox is credited with lifting the "western" out of the miry pit of yellow tabloid-ism because of the magazines which published his work. And had he lived longer critics and readers alike would be hailing his as one of the greatest writers of all time, not just a great writer of "westerns". Starlight Rider is an excellent novel. It is what it was intended to be. It will give the reader a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction with each reading of it. I do recommend it.