Charles O. Locke (1896-1977) was an American author best known for
his novels of the West. The scion of a newspaper family, he was
born in Tiffin, Ohio, and graduated from Yale University. Locke
began his career as a reporter at the Toledo Blade and
before long moved to New York City, where he wrote for a number of
newspapers, including the New York Post and the New York
World-Telegram. Like many, he fell in love not only with
the city but with its huge public library and access to the world
of theater. He composed songs and libretti for stage shows, wrote
plays for radio programs, and joined a local theater group, for
which he wrote, directed, and performed, sometimes in his own
plays.
Locke published his first novel, A Shadow of Our Own, in
1951, following it with his breakout success, The Hell Bent
Kid, in 1957. The story of a young man in the 1880s who
is unjustly pursued across the state of Texas by relentless
enemies, this mesmerizing tale was heralded by the Western Writers
of America as one of the top twenty-five Western novels of all
time. 20th Century Fox adapted the book into a feature film,
From Hell to Texas, in 1958.
The Southwest continued to fascinate Locke, and it provided the
backdrop to two more, equally powerful novels, also set in the
nineteenth century: Amelia Rankin (1959) and The Taste of
Infamy: The Adventure of John Killane (1960).
"Marvelous . . . I know of no other Western except Walter Van
Tilburg Clark's The Ox-Bow Incident that stirs me as
deeply." -Boston Herald
"Not only a superb Western, but a superior novel." -New York
Herald Tribune
"[Locke] manages to transcend the stereotyped patterns of the
Western manhunt. . . . [His] accomplishment lies in his gift for
sketching believable characters, his deep interest in their
motives, their devices and desires." -The New York Times
"Taut and suspenseful." -Chicago Sun-Times
"Memorable . . . As stark and stripped of unessential detail as a
ballad." -Harper's Magazine
"In all ways an admirable achievement . . . A story of great
force." -Alan Le May, author of The Searchers
"Taut as a bow-string; the suspense accumulates slowly like desert
heat." -The Sunday Times
"A masterpiece." -Daily Express
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