The Dude Must Die (LIN) (Linford Western Library) by Grover, Marshall and a great selection of similar Used, New and Collectible Books available now at AbeBooks.com.

1. Marshall Grover Books Used

Leonard Frank Meares was best known to western fans the world over as 'Marshall Grover', creator of Texas trouble-shooters Larry and Stretch. He was born in Sydney, Australia, on 13 February 1921, and started reading the westerns of Zane Grey, Clarence E Mulford and William Colt MacDonald when he was still a child. A lifelong movie buff with a particular fondness for shoot-'em-ups, he later recalled, 'At that early age I got a kick out of the humorous patches often seen in Buck Jones films, and realised that humour should always be an integral part of any western.' The aspiring author bought his first typewriter in the mid-1950s with the intention of writing for radio and the cinema, but when this proved to be easier said than done, he decided to try his hand at popular fiction instead.

The Dude Must Die (LIN) (Linford Western Library) by Grover, Marshall and a great selection of similar Used, New and Collectible Books available now at AbeBooks.com. Visit Amazon.com's Marshall Grover Page and shop for all Marshall Grover books. Check out pictures, bibliography, and biography of Marshall Grover.

Since a great many paperback westerns were being published locally, he set about writing one of his own. The result, Trouble Town, was published by the Cleveland Publishing Company in 1955. Although Len had devised the pseudonym 'Marshall Grover' for his first book, however, Cleveland decided to issue it under the name Johnny Nelson.

'I'm still chagrined about that,' he told me years later. Undaunted, he quickly developed a facility for writing westerns, and Cleveland eventually put him under contract. His tenth yarn, Drift!, (1956), introduced his fiddle-footed knights-errant, Larry Valentine and Stretch Emerson, the characters for which he would eventually become so beloved. And nowhere was the author's quirky sense of humor more apparent than in these action-packed and always painstakingly plotted yarns.

In mid-1966, Len left Cleveland and started writing exclusively for the Horwitz Group. Quick to exploit its latest asset, Horwitz soon sold more than 30 novels to Bantam Books for publication in the United States, where for legal reasons 'Marshall Grover' became 'Marshall McCoy', 'Larry and Stretch' became 'Larry and Streak' and 'Big Jim Rand' became 'Nevada Jim Gage'.

With their tighter editing and wonderful James Bama covers, I believe the westerns issued during this period are probably the author's best. Although I started reading the Larry and Stretch series when I was about 10 years old, it wasn't until 1979 (and I had reached the ripe old age of 21) that I finally decided to contact the author, via his publisher. When he eventually replied, I discovered a genial, self-deprecating and incredibly genuine man who showed real interest in his readers. And since we seemed to hit it off so well, what started out as a simple, one-off letter of appreciation quickly blossomed into a warm and lively correspondence which was to last for 14 years.

His first Black Horse Western was, fittingly enough, a Larry and Stretch yarn entitled Rescue a Tall Texan (1989). It's an entertaining entry in the long-running series in which Stretch, the homely, amiable but always slower-witted half of the duo, is kidnapped by an outlaw gang in need of a hostage. Naturally, Larry quickly sets out to track down and rescue his partner, and is joined along the way by an erudite half-Sioux Indian with the unlikely name of Cathcart P.

Slow Wolf, and the always-apoplectic Pinkerton operative, Dan Hoolihan, both popular recurring characters in the series. The climax is a typically robust shootout in which Larry and Stretch mix it up with no less than 13 hardcases - 13, in this instance, proving to be an extremely unlucky number for the bad guys. Rick and Hattie first appeared in Colorado Runaround, which was published in 1991.

Rick is a former cowboy, actor and gambler, Hattie (nee Keever) a one-time magician's assistant, chorus girl and knife-thrower's target. Thrown together by circumstances, the couple eventually fall in love, get spliced and set up the Braddock Detective Agency. Their first case involves the disappearance of a wealthy rancher's daughter, and it takes place - as did all of Len's westerns - on an historically sketchy but always largely good-natured frontier, where the harsh realities of life seldom make an appearance.

Tin Star Trio began life as an untitled short story featuring two drifters called Zack Holley and Curly Ryker. As soon as I started reading it, I realised that Len had been toying with the idea of continuing to write Larry and Stretch - most probably for publication by Hale - but changing the characters' names to avoid any legal difficulties. The story revolved around a missing cashbox hidden in a remote canyon, and told how Zack and Curly manage to thwart the attempts of a band of outlaws to retrieve it. A Quest of Heroes came about at the suggestion of Australian singer Dave Mathewson, a Marshall Grover fan from way back, who had earlier recorded a sort of 'tribute album' entitled The Marshall, Larry and Stretch and Me and You. Dave's brief plot, which was all about a bandit gang who kidnap white women in order to sell them into slavery south of the border, gave us an ideal opportunity to bring back not just Larry and Stretch (here once again masquerading as Zack and Curly), but all of Len's best-known characters, including Big Jim Rand, Slow Wolf, Dan Hoolihan and more.

Marshall Grover Books Used

Naturally, we had to change the names of all the main players, but I like to think that we produced a book that Len would have approved of.