Larry Sweazy, whose work was last featured in our pages more than a decade ago, returns to EQMM in our current issue (May/June 2024) with the memorable and moving story “The Low Waters,” in the Black Mask Department. The author is one of several EQMM contributors who are best known in the field of Western fiction. Larry won the Western Writers of America’s Spur award for Best Short Fiction in 2005 and for Best Paperback Original Novel in 2013. But he is also a mystery writer who has earned recognition with inclusion in year’s best anthologies and with a nomination for a Derringer Award in 2007. In this post, he considers the overlap of Western and crime fiction—something to be found in most of his fiction, including “The Low Waters,” which includes a setting much associated with Western fiction, the rodeo. —Janet Hutchings 

Deep into research about an ex-Civil War spy, I walked to my mailbox and found a brown envelope that contained Donald Hamilton’s first Matt Helm novel, Death of a Citizen. I had told Loren D. Estleman that I had not read any of the Matt Helm novels, that I had only seen the cheesy and fun Bond-knockoff Dean Martin movies of the 1960s. Loren assured me that the books were different, much better than the Matt Helm movies, and sent me a copy. Of course, Loren, a writing legend in the Western and mystery field, was right.

Published in 1960, Death of a Citizen chronicles the rebirth of a World War Two assassin, reactivated by the government after a former colleague goes rogue. The writing is tight and shows off Hamilton’s years of experience as a serious craftsman. At the center of the book, I found the Cowboy Code fully embodied in Matt Helm’s actions. That shouldn’t have been much of a surprise since Donald Hamilton had previously published paperback Westerns alongside his better-known spy novels and novels of suspense; his first novel, Date with Darkness, was published in 1947. I quickly read all the Matt Helm books. Move the Helm books back in time seventy-five years, put Matt on a four-legged mustang instead of behind the wheel of an automobile and all the Matt Helm novels would work as a Western. That could be said for a lot of mysteries and crime novels.

The Cowboy Code is a relatively simple set of ethics. There are several versions written by singing cowboy star Gene Autry, the National Day of the Cowboy, the state of Wyoming and more. The Code goes like this: “The cowboy must never shoot first, hit a smaller man, or take unfair advantage; He must never go back on his word, or a trust confided in him; He must always tell the truth; He must be kind to children, the elderly, and animals…” and continues with more commandments that demand decency and a Do Unto Others mindset. In other words, the Good Guy should be good until someone pulls out a gun. Then all bets are off.

Erle Stanley Gardner, author of the Perry Mason novels, said, “The modern detective story and the modern Western have a great deal in common. In essence both kinds of stories are American products, like corn on the cob and blueberry pie.” Sometimes that commonality is overlooked or looked down upon. Genre fiction is an easy target. Both genres are generally considered the literary equivalent of jazz, but I’ll leave that debate for the academics.

It’s not that difficult to witness the intersection of Westerns, mysteries, and the inclusion of the modern version of the Cowboy Code in both genres. Justified, the television show based on Elmore Leonard’s short story, “Fire in the Hole,” featuring U.S. Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens. Givens, played masterfully by Timothy Olyphant, with a perfect white Stetson, a Gary Cooper limp, and humble aw-shucks charm, is an obvious example of the modern mystery-Western hybrid. Raylan is a walking, talking reflection of the Cowboy Code (even though he breaks some of the rules). Which shouldn’t come as a surprise since Leonard started out writing Western short stories, then moved to writing Western novels. With his crime novels, Leonard catapulted his characters forward in time and brought the best parts of their Western backbone and character with him. If you’ve never read Valdez is Coming or Last Stand at Saber River, I would encourage you to search them out. Leonard was a master of dialogue early on, but he was also a master of character. Desperation brings out the best and worst of people no matter the time-period, setting, or genre. Human emotion is boundless, only constrained at times, by value and morals like the Cowboy Code which can be found, I would argue, in all of Elmore Leonard’s books and short stories (See also “3:10 to Yuma”).

Texas writer Bill Crider (author of the excellent Sheriff Dan Rhodes novels) once theorized that the intersection of Western and mystery novels could be found in perfect form at the beginning of modern storytelling. In a January Magazine article, Crider said, “I could go into a long digression here, expounding one of my pet theories, which is that both the Western and the mystery — at least in the form of the private eye novel — can be traced back a long way together, back to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Then I’d track them forward through Beowulf to Malory’s account of Arthur’s Round Table and on to James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales. It’s my contention that the so-called ‘Code of the West’ originated with Natty Bumppo, and that from there it developed the unwritten rules followed by The Virginian and by private eyes from Philip Marlowe to Spenser.”

I would extend Bill Crider’s list to Jack Reacher and, of course, to Raylan Givens in print and on the television screen, and add that most, if not all, private eye protagonists, male and female, are Cowboy Code card-carrying members of that original club.

How could the Western and the mystery not continually keep bumping into each other? There is usually a law enforcement entity of some kind involved in both genres: U.S. Deputy Marshal, Texas Ranger, local sheriff, Pinkerton agent, detective, etc. More variations than I can list here. Deputy U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn was hired by a fourteen-year-old girl to go after the outlaw who killed her father in True Grit. In the movie Wild Horses, a detective opens a fifteen-year-old missing persons case, and in Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire books, the local sheriff of Wyoming’s Absaroka County, is one of the best-known crime solvers of the Twenty-First century. Add to the list the stranger that comes to town to clean things up and a direct line can be drawn from Lassiter in The Rider’s of the Purple Sage to the Continental Op in Red Harvest to Jack Schaefer’s Shane to Donald Hamilton’s Matt Helm, and on to Lee Child’s Jack Reacher. Along with the law enforcement aspect, the Cowboy Code exists in each of the characters I’ve noted here. The Code continues to show itself no matter how far away we get from the “Golden Age” of Westerns.

My own introduction to the Western genre came as a kid growing up the 1960s. I have black and white memories of that time since we didn’t have a color television until I was eleven years old. The clarion call of The Lone Ranger or Bonanza meant we’d better be ready to sit down and watch TV or we’d miss the show until the next rerun—which could be months or years. With only three channels there was little choice and Westerns dominated the TV screen. There was no mistaking the Cowboy Code in the Audie Murphy movies that aired on Saturday afternoons (after cartoons), or in Gunsmoke, The Wild, Wild West, or Have Gun, Will Travel or Mannix. It was important to me growing up in a fatherless household to see how men behaved. Tough. Sensitive. Honest. Trustworthy. The good guys were good, and the bad guys were bad—most of the time. I didn’t know anything about the Cowboy Code until I was much older, but I can see now how I was influenced by it and the Westerns that I watched as a kid. When it came time for me to write my own stories, it was probably a given that Westerns would somehow be a foundation for my own novels and short stories, regardless of the era or the genre they were assigned to.

Reading Death of a Citizen by Donald Hamilton was a great gift. One that I would always be grateful to Loren D. Estleman for. That book demonstrated to me how a modern-day character in a spy novel could carry the Cowboy Code and Western DNA into the present and still be true to the mystery/crime/spy genre it was intended for.

The Cowboy Code endures at the intersection of Western and mysteries because both genres touch the same chord of life: restoring order; good prevailing over evil; justice is served; right always wins over wrong. The difference in genre might only be a horse and a car, a different period in time, but the good guys all have the same heart. It is my hope that the Cowboy Code will be standing at the intersection of mysteries and Westerns for a long time to come.  

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For further reading, please check out books written by these authors: Alistair MacLean; Bill Crider; Bill Pronzini; C.J. Box; Craig Johnson; Dashiell Hammett; Davis Dresser (Brett Halliday); Donald Hamilton; Ed Gorman; Elizabeth Crook; Elmore Leonard; Frank Gruber; Harry Whittington; Jack Schaefer; J.A. Jance; James Lee Burke; James M. Reasoner; Joe Gores; John D. MacDonald; Keith McCafferty; L.J. Washburn; Loren D. Estleman; Marcia Muller; Melissa Lenhardt; Max Allan Collins; Richard Jessup; Robert B. Parker; Robert J. Randisi; William L. DeAndrea.