Jack Reason studied the tall stranger with the practised eye of a man living in a world of gunslingers where spotting the signals could mean the difference between being the first to draw and the first to die.
The stranger, slightly nervous, wetted his top lip with his bottom lip. Again. Reason, drinking in every detail, pounced.
“That’s the fourth time you’ve done it!” he exclaimed. “I could use that!”
Reason, alias retired Shrewsbury journalist Brian Parvin, has completed 47 Western novels and it may come as a surprise to folk in the county town that some of them have helped provide inspiration for the characters in the books.
It is not that he bases his heroes and villains on Shrewsbury folk. But he does draw on their mannerisms, gestures, and little traits.
“I don’t think anyone would obviously recognise themselves. But there are certain characteristics. I don’t suppose they’re peculiar to Shrewsbury. You could not take a whole person. You would never be able to interpret that person because you would never get to their soul. What you can do is take a part, a portion - a mannerism is the word.”
As for my own, he mused about how he could use it.
“My shootist. He watched. What did he watch for? The lick of the lips! And he knew he was going to draw. That appeals to my readers. I’m so glad you called. I can use it.”
As it happens my own mannerism magically disappeared after Brian offered me a cup of coffee. Perhaps he can write that in as well.
He had spotted something else. “You have interesting eyes. They’re very dark. I like those.”
Will I be a hero or a villain, I ask. Brian laughs in what I take to be “a hero, of course” way.
His latest book is now out. It’s called Bluegrass Bounty. A notorious outlaw is captured by two supposedly expert bounty hunters. He’s a big prize. But it’s all too easy…
Jack Reason is one of three pseudonyms which Brian uses in writing his Westerns - the others are Luther Chance and Dan Claymaker.
Brian has a slightly different persona when writing in each of his literary guises.
“Dan is the thoughtful one. Jack is the man of action, for want of a cliche. Luther has a slightly humorous side. He sees the funny side of things.
“As my wife says, she has been married to four men for a long time. She never knows quite who she is waking up with.”
For readers of the genre, there are certain expectations and conventions. It is a romanticised, fictionalised, version of the West.
“As a writer of Westerns you have to be very careful. If you try to write a history of the real West, then you are not appealing to your Western reader. He knows a fair bit about these frontiers, Indian wars, wagon trains, and crossing the great plains, but he doesn’t really want to know about that.
“He wants a black and white story. The villain is very black. The hero is very white. And good will undoubtedly triumph. It has to. That’s the beauty of it as far as I’m concerned. It’s got a great moral message.
“They know who is going to die within about four pages. They know, probably within ten pages, who is going to do the killing. It’s the getting there that’s the major thing. That’s the beauty of it. How is the hero going to do it when the odds are stacked mercilessly against him?”
While readers don’t want history, Brian cannot be careless with the details.
“My readers will quickly pick up anything that’s loose in the form of weaponry, such as a Colt or a Winchester repeating rifle. All these things you have to be careful about. Similarly with clothing. Broad brimmed hats. Never say trousers - always pants. And so on.”
Brian has himself fired a gun in anger, while serving with the Gurkhas in Malaya.
“I can tell you one thing. The recoil on a hand-held gun is phenomenal.”
But he has never been to the setting of his literary works.
“I have travelled in many countries throughout the world, but have never been to the American states. And sometimes I feel a little bit fearful about doing it. If I went out there, I would certainly want to go right into the Mid West, and I just wonder whether I would be a bit disillusioned. Would Utah seem quite as Utah seems to be in my books?”
Before writing Westerns, Brian wrote detective stories, and animal stories of the Watership Down variety.
“When I first met my wife her passion was Westerns. If we went to the flicks, as they were known in those days, she would choose a Western. I thought, that’s something I have never done. Could I do it? Could I write a Western? And I did.”
His wife continues to play a central part in his Westerns. He writes them in longhand, and then she types them up.
“It’s a partnership, a team effort,” he says.
Incidentally Brian’s own favourite film is Shane, the classic one-man-against-the-odds Western.
His first Western book, Rain Guns, came out in 1992. And he has not looked back. As we part, he is still observing.
“They are dark eyes, aren’t they? In certain lights, they’re almost black. A good shootist’s eyes!”
Bluegrass Bounty is published by Robert Hale. It is hardback, and costs £11.99.
By Toby Neal
2 Comments
I found this article most interesting as I knew Brian some fifty years ago whilst we were both serving in Malaya.
At that time he had produced a book of poems “Pebbles in my Pocket” and I recall he had some work broadcast over Radio Malaya.
Although not a great reader myself, I found his book “The Singing Tree” totally enthralling.
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I went to school with Brian Parvin and served in the army with him in Malayasia 1956-1958.
I also went to his wedding.
Have not seen him for about fifty years, is it posssible to make contact with him?
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