“Marshall McCoy” was a pseudonym of Australian writer Leonard Frank Meares who published over 700 books in his career. He wrote plenty of adventures about “Larry & Streak,” a pair of cowboy knights-errant. In Gun Glory for Texans (1968) the pair defend the Lone Star state against slander. Plenty of vivid gunplay results! One reason the Marshall McCoy series published by Bantam Books was so popular was the covers done by James Bama (yes, the same James Bama that did the cover artwork for the Doc Savage series). These Marshall McCoy paperbacks have become very collectible, but if you run across a copy you’ll find some fine action writing, too!
George, you are right about the cover. Western fiction has some of the best cover art, I think. I often read westerns based only on the covers. I haven’t read any of the Larry and Streak adventures, though.
Prashant, I suspect “Marshall McCoy,” like “carter brown,” never visited America even though they wrote hundreds of books about the U.S.
George, to McCoy and Carter Brown, I’ll add British writer Oliver Strange who wrote ten SUDDEN novels without once crossing the Atlantic.
Prashant, my favorite example is Edgar Rice Burroughs never visiting Africa! But those Tarzan novels ring true (to me, at least).
I remember buyig those Bantam books published. They’re packed away somewhere.
Randy, the Marshall McCoy westerns are very collectible now. Some of the online prices are sky-high!
I have this book. The Larry & Streak stories are fun, and the books are short, which I appreciate.
Bill, I knew you would like the title of this book. And, you’re right about the Marshall McCoy books being short. GUN GLORY FOR TEXANS is only 86 pages long!
I love these books, read them all when they were new, then years later read many of the ones published only in Australia and also corresponded with Len Meares, who was an absolutely wonderful person and a great inspiration as a writer. To expand a little on your comment about the cover art, Bama did the covers for Len’s other series published by Bantam, Nevada Jim (Big Jim in the original editions). Some of the Nevada Jim covers were later reused for covers on Louis L’Amour novels. One of the most common editions of FLINT, for instance, has Nevada Jim cover art. The covers on the Larry and Streak novels were by someone else, Lou Feck, maybe. I don’t have one of them in front of me to check right now. Larry Vance and Streak Everett were Larry Valentine and Stretch Emerson in the originals. The books were also hugely popular in the Scandinavian countries. Late in Len’s career, Horwitz stopped publishing the books in Australia, but Len kept writing them for translation into Swedish. They’re wonderful books, and I highly recommend any of them.
James, thanks for the clarification! I have some of the Nevada Jim westerns that Bantam published. I pick up Marshall McCoys whenever I find them (which is rare now). I find it amusing that Meares continued to publish his westerns in Scandinavia!
I believe Larry and Stretch were called Bill and Ben in those translations. Len wasn’t happy that the stories he was writing never appeared in English, but being the pro that he was, he carried on. He sold several books in a new series to Robert Hale in England for the Black Horse Westerns line, and they were published under his real name. I believe he would have gone more in that direction if his health hadn’t failed him. It was a real shock when we got a note from a mutual friend saying that Len had passed away.
James, hopefully all those “Marshall McCoy” books, especially the ones published in Scandinavia, become available as ebooks.
Piccadilly Publishing is now publishing the Larry & Stretch and the Big Jim series as ebooks: http://piccadillypublishing.org/Larry_Stretch/Larry_Stretch.html