Piccadilly Publishing / George G. Gilman

GEORGE G. GILMAN (11 December 1936 - 23 January 2019)

was a pseudonym created and used by the near-legendary Terry Harknett -- is so well-known to western readers that he hardly needs any introduction. Arguably the most influential British western writer of the last 50 years, his tough, graphic, wise-cracking westerns are still in demand, even though almost twenty years have now passed since the last one was published.

Terence William Harknett was born in Rainham, Essex. Although his earliest ambition was to become a car mechanic, he changed his mind upon leaving Rainham Secondary Modern School in 1951, and chose instead to pursue a career as a reporter. He went to work as a copy boy at Reuters News Agency, and later became a typist at Reuters Comtelburo. It was here, whilst on night duty in 1953, that he wrote and sold his first short story, a romance entitled Katie's Birthday.

In the opening book: The Loner (1972), the central character, Edge, is established in no uncertain terms. A veteran of the Civil War with fifty-six kills to his credit, Edge is a six foot three inch Mexican-Swedish halfbreed whose armory includes a vicious, bone-handled razor with which he is capable of performing any number of graphic disfigurements. The book opens when Edge -- formerly Captain Josiah C Hedges until a terrified Mexican mispronounces his name -- returns home from the war to find that his crippled brother has been tortured and killed by his former companions, and their farm razed to the ground. What follows is essentially a revenge/justice story based upon a formula to which most of the subsequent books would adhere: a series of violent set-pieces shockingly presented within the framework of a basic, generally off-beat premise, with a humorous punchline forming the ending to each of the twelve to eighteen chapters.

Edge really was, as the cover copy promised, "a new kind of western hero." He was violent, anti-social and chauvenistic, and only survived in his harsh, Spaghetti-western style environment by being twice as mean as his opponents.

The success of Edge led him to create a companion series featuring a shorter, greyer and somewhat milder (though no less murderous) anti-hero: ADAM STEELE. Steele's life, as that of his forerunner, is changed dramatically and forever at the end of the War. In The Violent Peace (1974) he embarks upon a vengeance hunt when his father, wrongly suspected of being a rebel sympathiser, is lynched in the aftermath of President Lincoln's assassination. In the process he's forced to kill his best friend, a marshal, and in turn becomes a wanted man himself. The story was based upon an unfilmed screenplay that Harknett wrote for a producer who had been unable to buy the movie rights to the Edge series.

Illustrations Copyright Tony Masero

GEORGE G. GILMAN

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GEORGE G. GILMAN

Purchase from these Retailers

This website is the property of Piccadilly PublishingAll rights reserved For information, please contact the webmaster

This website is the property of Piccadilly Publishing
All rights reserved
For information, please contact the webmaster