cover image Houston

Houston

Doug Bowman. Forge, $23.95 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-312-86246-6

Imagine a combination of James Arness, Randolph Scott, John Wayne, Alan Ladd and Jimmy Dean's ""Big Bad John"" and you have Camp Houston, the roughest, toughest gunfighter in the West. He is also one of its most insufferable collections of cliches. Standing 6'2"" (or 6'3"" or 6'4""; it varies) and weighing 190 lbs. (or 220 or 240; this also varies), he has steely gray eyes, a lantern jaw and a vise-like grip, not to mention that he speaks proper English to everyone, even apostrophe-spouting yokels. When Camp's friend John Calloway and his buddies are murdered by renegade drovers, vigilante Camp roams the Texas range determined to bring them to justice or die in the attempt. Whiling away the time with memories of past adventures, Camp covers leagues of geography in mere hours and always arrives fresh, tall in the saddle and flirtatiously appealing to any Western damsel he encounters. Country-and-Western musician Bowman (H&R Cattle Company) could have intended this as a parody of the Grey-L'Amour tradition, but it has neither the wit nor the bite to succeed as a spoof. (Mar.)