Country: USA
Genre: Western
Pages: 106 kb (eOriginal)
Buy It Here
He stepped in, and a man in a shabby, food-stained tuxedo scurried up to him. "We don't serve Negros or Indians here," he said. bending his head at a sign in the door. "You do now", Miles said.
A long, long time ago, in a society far, far away, it was considered all right for men to read. There even was a fiction market for them. Stories you could read in the bus, on the johns or during your break at work, without having to figure out the coming-of-age of some college kid formatted in sixty pages chapters. That's right, the pulp fiction era. David Cranmer, the one-man army behind Beat To A Pulp Publishing*, is one of the rare souls who work at the second coming of this golden era. His latest move was to franchise his Western characters Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles**. Interesting choice if there was one, he entrusted the ever busy Heath Lowrance with the responsibility of giving Gideon Miles his first stand-alone work, titled MILES TO LITTLE RIDGE. Two household names in pulp fiction, one character I really, really like, so how could anything go wrong?
Well, it doesn't. It's as simple as that. I've never shied away from the fact that I liked Gideon Miles more than Cash Laramie and I'm happy Heath Lowrance saw the same thing I did in this character. U.S Marshall Gideon Miles is on the job again, having to retrieve a man in the town of Little Ridge to bring him to justice. Being a U.S Marshall wasn't an easy job back then (it still isn't today!) and it was even worse for a black man. But Gideon Miles is cut from a special mold. He's no hero, but he's the most relentless bastard you will find. Little Ridge is not ready to see a black man tie up convicted criminal Edward Gandy and leave with him in the sunset. He's now one of their upstanding citizens and Little Ridge protects its own. So Miles is on his own against a city, who shelters a few distant memories from his own past. Not the pleasant type of memories, that is.
Here's what I like so much about Miles. He's a dedicated lawman and yet by nature he's made to be one of the greatest boogeyman of this era. He's black. And does this ever piss him off. What I thought Lowrance nailed particularly well here, is the feeling that Little Ridge is a warm and welcoming place for its own. Miles is seen as an intruder on both accounts. Because of the color of his skin and also because of his job. Little Ridge comes alive and tries to extract Miles like a virus. Lowrance used his knack for sharp dialogue to picture Miles and his crankiest, most efficient and yet so damn polite about everything. The U.S Marshall doesn't take shit from anybody, not even the most well-meaning asshole. The job's the job and it's hard enough for a black man to make it in the world, nobody's going to get in the way of things. He leads by the example like Martin Luther King did a hundred years later, except that Miles shoots people sometimes. Lowrance nailed that something in his voice that underlines this quirk.
"Sheriff," Miles said. "I'm not going to argue with you. I've just ridden three hundred miles. I'm tired, I'm hungry and I'm in no mood. You're going to tell me where to find Gandy, and you're going to do it with a smile on your face, because you're just happy as hell to help. I'm going to ask you one more time. Where is Edward Gandy?"
MILES TO LITTLE RIDGE is a novella, so it's rather short. I love that the eBooks bring back this almost-forgotten literary form. Lowrance does a good job at keeping his aim honest, but accurate. It reads like a short story, but its chapters structure and its dual storyline (Gandy's extraction/Miles' old friends) makes it richer and more complex than the short story form would have allowed. There is not a word wasted or misplaced to MILES TO LITTLE RIDGE. It's not easy to accomplish in longer forms. It's some of Heath Lowrance's best work. It's not the most visceral or emotional story, but it doesn't aim at being so. MILES TO LITTLE RIDGE exposes some of the sneakiest dangers a lawman had to face back then. Even if you hate Westerns with a gut-wrenching passion, MILES TO LITTLE RIDGE will make you like them.
FOUR STARS
*This is not true, I wrote it because it sounded cool and it illustrated the amount of work the man chomps down on a daily basis very well. I do know he receives help from Scott Parker, among others.