Men's Adventure Novels: Edge #1, The Loner

When I was a kid, my father knew a retired railroad detective who was dying slowly of cancer. This detective spent his time in his basement with a huge collection of guns and knives, some of which were highly illegal. He even had a grenade launcher. Well, Dad and I would occasionally visit to shoot the bull (I didn't really say anything, I just listened). And after each trip to the basement the detective would hand me a box of paperbacks. He spent a lot of the time he had left reading. And through him I discovered my first Lawrence Block, Ed McBain, and Charles Willeford novels. But early on the books of his I loved most were the Men's Adventure Novels. The Executioner, The Destroyer, and Max Allan Collins' Nolan series were favorites. I could read one or more in a day. I felt such excitement picking a new paperback out of the box. They were, in hindsight, totally inappropriate for a kid who just hit his teens. But in another way, the timing couldn't have been more perfect. My parents wouldn't let me see an "R" rated movie, but I could read anything I got my hands on. I read my first Westerns from those boxes. And none came badder than George G. Gilman's Edge series. They were spaghetti westerns in print form. Gilman was a pseudonym for Terry Harknett, one of the Piccadilly Cowboys (a group of UK pulp western writers). The Edge books were hyperviolent and hypersexual -- just what a hyper kid needed. What I remember most was Edge's complete outsider status. Book #1 was titled The Loner. Edge was an anti-hero, a half-breed sociopath, and an existentialist man apart. Like his cinematic counterparts, he stood the genre on its head and added a layer of grit, grease, and gore. I read dozens of books from each of those series, but every time I got a new box from the detective, I'd always dig for an Edge.