Sunday, February 28, 2010

Deja Vu

I was cruising Dorchester's website looking at the new batch of Westerns being released in March, and was hit with a powerful sense of deja vu--see below.













It is a great cover.

The Ed Gorman title--Shoot First--is a terrific novel. It is out of print, but shouldn't be hard to find. It is one of my favorite Gorman Westerns.

I haven't read any of Cameron Judd's work, but I might start with this one. The description at the Dorchester website reads:

Deputy Luke Cable’s job has gotten a whole lot harder lately. He’s been acting marshal since Marshal Ben Keely left on a trip east—and disappeared. It’s up to Luke to keep the peace, and that’s hard to do since the arrival of the Outlaw Train, a traveling collection of curiosities, including the remains of notorious outlaws. But not all the outlaws in town are dead. Scar Nolan is very much alive. He came to town right after the train pulled in. He’s killed before and unless Luke can stop him he’s aiming to do it again aboard the...OUTLAW TRAIN

4 comments:

Ed Gorman said...

Wow, Ben. I've heard of "homage" before but those covers are pretty much...identical?

Ed Gorman said...

Now that I look closer they are identical. It's a fine cover and I don't blame them for picking it up for use again. In fact when they reprint Wolf Moon in 2011 I hope they use the Ballantine cover which was excellent. I should suggest that. They're bringing back four more of my westerns for which I'm very grateful. Dorchester and Berkley are about the only publishers left in the field. so I feel very fortunate.

Richard S. Wheeler said...

Strapped publishers are looking for cover art that costs them nothing these days. That's a great cover, so use it again.

Just as often, covers are imitative. When my historical novel Badlands came out in the early 90s, the publishers put a Lonesome Dove cover on it. They wanted my novel to feed on Lonesome Dove.

Tosser said...

One wonders if the person who painted this cover gets paid twice. I hope so.

Btw, "Shoot first" is available on Amazon for one entire cent!