Rangy Pete

Canadian novelist Guy Morton's Rangy Pete is one of a trio of westerns he wrote in the 1920s (the other two being Black Gold and Wards of the Azure Hills). In this one, the Gary Cooper-esque title character, Rangy Pete, goes up against the Dervishers, and outlaw clan that's been stirring up trouble for the peaceable folks of Triple Butte. In so doing, he encounters a beautiful blue-eyed girl-bandit who promptly throws a lasso around his heart. As the action heats up, the grandeur of magnificent western landscape does battle with the picturesqueness of Rangy's colorful cowboy argot, and the reader comes out the winner. Guy Morton wrote a score of novels in the 1920s and 1930s that found popularity especially in Britain and Australia. Besides westerns, he wrote spy-thrillers, such as The Black Robe (filmed in Canada as Secrets of Chinatown in 1935), featuring secret agent Donegal Dawn, as well as a dozen or so murder mysteries, often told with a comic touch. He was a Toronto-based journalist and worked as an editor of The Globe and Mail. (Summary by Grant Hurlock)