Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Old fashioned Western with Alaskan favor., July 26, 2001
A short Western novel with an Alaskan favor. He trys to capture the old Alaskan gold rush days to include them in the development of Morgette. You know the storyline: the good guy usually wins in the end. The fun part is reading to get there.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE REEL MCCOY/JUST LIKE THEM OLD MOOM PICHERS, January 10, 2004
By A Customer
When the author of this book came to Alaska first, fifty-seven years ago, only some fifty-one years before that the Gold Rush days were in their infancy. His father had joined the rush to Nome as a boy, only forty-six years before. The point of this is that today we can still find a lot of Alaskan pioneers around from forty or fifty years ago and talk to them, and get the flavor of things the way they were right after WWII in Alaska - not much different from the Gold Rush Days as a matter of fact. Thus when Glenn Boyer was first in Alaska he found lots of old timers around from whom to get the flavor and feel of things and he obviously did it and can put it across to readers. You can smell, feel and visualize "how it was." But he himself obviously experienced a time much different than today's Alaska and a lot more like the historical period he covers so realistically here. How many of you remember Cap Lathrop or Archie Ferguson from first hand contact?
This is the second book in a series about Dolf Morgette, a legendary lawman in the tradition of Wyatt Earp. He comes to Alaska on a manhunt for a killer who shot his good friend, Harvey Parrent, having mistaken Harvey for Dolf himself. He is only partially successful and the manhunt continues in the next volume MORGETTE ON THE BARBARY COAST.
Oddly, reviewers (some of them women) haven't picked up on the fact that Boyer's Morgette series is full of strong women doing things as well or better than men. Morever, many of them, such as Dolf's wife, Margaret are minorities. Although Boyer never makes clear her exact tribe, she is obviously a Nez Perce, indicated by the exploits of her father, Chief Henry, a Chief Joseph look alike. Dolf and Margaret adopt the native daughter of their Indian nurse, who has died of tuberculosis, as so many of them did.
Margaret bears their son, Henry, in Alaska and almost dies in childbirth, saved by the timely visit of Dolf's old friend, Doc Hennessey, who performs a Cesarean delivery. Following a winter in the vicinity of Dyea, they push inland and travel down the Yukon in boats they build themselves, just as the other spampeders did, only they are ahead of the Dawson Rush and go in to the Sky Pilot Diggin's, an obvious parallel to Preacher Creek, and the town that they found parallels Circle City.
They are dogged by the usual bunch of bad guys who are attempting to reach the diggin's ahead of them, apprised of the secret that Jack Quillen, a sourdough is the only one who knows the exact location. Behind the bad guys is one faction of early developers, and behind Dolf and Quillen are another, like the AC Co. and N.A.T.T. who were to pioneer Alaska. John Hedley, local strong man of Dolf's faction is derived from pioneer John Healy (for whom Healy, Alaska is named) and a rare old scoundrel. For those of you who like historical tie-ins, read about Healy's Montana and Canada career in such books as Whoop-up Country.
The story starts with efforts to get rid of Dolf, starting on the steamer north, where someone tries to murder him, continue in Dyea, and follow him down the Yukon, where they cut loose a boat in which he's nursing a severely strained leg, just above Miles Canyon. Here he is rescued by his wife Margaret's heroic swim to the boat to save both Dolf and their baby, Henry.
These bad guys are so mean they don't even clean their fingernails. Treat yourself to some real fun in the tradition of old time Western writers who had been there and wrote for Western Story Magazine in the hey day of the pulps and graduated into "Satevepost" and "Colliers" and quality Westerns where even the bad guys knew the difference between right and wrong. (They just didn't give a damn - something like Pete Rose.) But, as they should, they get theirs in the end, except - as I said - the worst guy of all escapes, whom Dolf has to track back to the Barbary Coast in San Francisco. (Natch! To keep the series going. And it's a fun series full of rainy afternoon books of the kind you are sorry to see end.)
The author's days in Alaska dated from Jan. 1947 through July 1949, when he flew with an outfit locating radar sites that later became the DEW LINE, and sometimes walked with the ground crews, due to a shortage of men. Due to its extracurricular activities the organization was known as the 6th Rod and Gun. (Whose exploits equalled those of the 10th Rescue Squadron, which was known as the 10th Hunting and Fishing in the days when Flying Legend, Papa Berndt Balchen was at its helm.) As Boyer says: "I must have slogged up every damn mountain in Alaska" - and quickly adds: "I made that up, but climbed a lot of them, including Anvil, at Nome, because I missed the `cat' train; worse yet I did it on snow shoes with a hangover." Zounds! A Hangover? In Alaska? Yes, kiddies. Alaska is sort of well-known for hootch, which is where the name was coined. (From Hoochinoo.)
I note that someone from Fairbanks, Alaska rated this book one star. I wonder if he's ever been out of town.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE REEL MCCOY/JUST LIKE THEM OLD MOOM PICHERS, January 10, 2004
By A Customer
When the author of this book came to Alaska first, fifty-seven years ago, only some fifty-one years before that the Gold Rush days were in their infancy. His father had joined the rush to Nome as a boy, only forty-six years before. The point of this is that today we can still find a lot of Alaskan pioneers around from forty or fifty years ago and talk to them, and get the flavor of things the way they were right after WWII in Alaska - not much different from the Gold Rush Days as a matter of fact. Thus when Glenn Boyer was first in Alaska he found lots of old timers around from whom to get the flavor and feel of things and he obviously did it and can put it across to readers. You can smell, feel and visualize "how it was." But he himself obviously experienced a time much different than today's Alaska and a lot more like the historical period he covers so realistically here. How many of you remember Cap Lathrop or Archie Ferguson from first hand contact?
This is the second book in a series about Dolf Morgette, a legendary lawman in the tradition of Wyatt Earp. He comes to Alaska on a manhunt for a killer who shot his good friend, Harvey Parrent, having mistaken Harvey for Dolf himself. He is only partially successful and the manhunt continues in the next volume MORGETTE ON THE BARBARY COAST.
Oddly, reviewers (some of them women) haven't picked up on the fact that Boyer's Morgette series is full of strong women doing things as well or better than men. Morever, many of them, such as Dolf's wife, Margaret are minorities. Although Boyer never makes clear her exact tribe, she is obviously a Nez Perce, indicated by the exploits of her father, Chief Henry, a Chief Joseph look alike. Dolf and Margaret adopt the native daughter of their Indian nurse, who has died of tuberculosis, as so many of them did.
Margaret bears their son, Henry, in Alaska and almost dies in childbirth, saved by the timely visit of Dolf's old friend, Doc Hennessey, who performs a Cesarean delivery. Following a winter in the vicinity of Dyea, they push inland and travel down the Yukon in boats they build themselves, just as the other spampeders did, only they are ahead of the Dawson Rush and go in to the Sky Pilot Diggin's, an obvious parallel to Preacher Creek, and the town that they found parallels Circle City.
They are dogged by the usual bunch of bad guys who are attempting to reach the diggin's ahead of them, apprised of the secret that Jack Quillen, a sourdough is the only one who knows the exact location. Behind the bad guys is one faction of early developers, and behind Dolf and Quillen are another, like the AC Co. and N.A.T.T. who were to pioneer Alaska. John Hedley, local strong man of Dolf's faction is derived from pioneer John Healy (for whom Healy, Alaska is named) and a rare old scoundrel. For those of you who like historical tie-ins, read about Healy's Montana and Canada career in such books as Whoop-up Country.
The story starts with efforts to get rid of Dolf, starting on the steamer north, where someone tries to murder him, continue in Dyea, and follow him down the Yukon, where they cut loose a boat in which he's nursing a severely strained leg, just above Miles Canyon. Here he is rescued by is wife Margaret's heroic swim to the boat to save both Dolf and their baby, Henry.
These bad guys are so mean they don't even clean their fingernails. Treat yourself to some real fun in the tradition of old time Western writers who had been there and wrote for Western Story Magazine in the hey day of the pulps and graduated into "Satevepost" and "Colliers" and quality Westerns where even the bad guys knew the difference between right and wrong. (They just didn't give a damn - something like Pete Rose.) But, as they should, they get theirs in the end, except - as I said - the worst guy of all escapes, whom Dolf has to track back to the Barbary Coast in San Francisco. (Natch! To keep the series going. And it's a fun series full of rainy afternoon books of the kind you are sorry to see end.)
The author's days in Alaska dated from Jan. 1947 through July 1949, when he flew with an outfit locating radar sites that later became the DEW LINE, and sometimes walked with the ground crews, due to a shortage of men. Due to its extracurricular activities the organization was known as the 6th Rod and Gun. (Whose exploits equalled those of the 10th Rescue Squadron, which was known as the 10th Hunting and Fishing in the days when Flying Legend, Papa Berndt Balchen was at its helm.) As Boyer says: "I must have slogged up every damn mountain in Alaska" - and quickly adds: "I made that up, but climbed a lot of them, including Anvil, at Nome, because I missed the `cat' train; worse yet I did it on snow shoes with a hangover." Zounds! A Hangover? In Alaska? Yes, kiddies. Alaska is sort of well-known for hootch, which is where the name was coined. (From Hoochinoo.)
I note that someone from Fairbanks, Alaska rated this book one star. I wonder if he's ever been out of town.
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