Reviews for The Sand Dancers

The average rating for The Sand Dancers based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-08-18 00:00:00 David Caylor One of the best Western novels (or novellas) I've ever read. Frank Bonham was a giant of Pulp Westerns. He wrote numerous scripts for Western TV series in the 1950s-1960s. His writing is as concise as Elmore Leonard's early Western short stories and novels. This novel concerns a young man just released from jail after serving a year in prison for allegedly setting fire to a stagecoach station. Strictly a frame-up. The girl with whom he was in love has left him & settled with the novel's villain. As in husband & wife. This novel falls into the rival stagecoach outfits genre. Not a word is wasted. Spare and lean narrative. The dialogue is realistic and the action overwhelms. No idea where you can find a copy of this gem. Mine is a hardcopy paperback copyrighted 1964, Monarch Books. Could be a reprint from a novella originally published in an old Pulp magazine. The action scenes are frequent and practically visual. One of my favorite passages: Then he felt a massive jolt in the earth, a tremor which was followed by a puff of wind against his face. Motion in the slide farther up the road drew his gaze. He stared. ... A great mass of boulders was rising from the earth on a mushrooming column of dust; smaller stones soared high, twisting and turning in the air. As the larger rocks fell back, a slide started. In a dusty tangle of brush and small junipers, the boulders plunged downhill toward the road. The rumble of their movement came through the earth. Rian came slowly to his feet, a coldness spreading through him. He saw **** standing beside the road, facing the slide. She began to run. As she ran, the path of the rock slide widened. A few smaller stones bounded down the slope and landed near the road. **** swerved, leaving the road to run across the narrow valley between the hills. She stumbled and fell, regained her feet and ran a little farther before a sotol cactus tangled her skirts and stopped her. As she tried to pull free, the base of the slide stirred with a bass grunting sound. Here and there, puffs of dust burst from it. The mass began to settle almost wearily, seeking its own level. Already littered with smaller stones, the road now began to be covered with larger ones. Then there was a louder roar, a muted thunder, as the slide spread. .... Small rocks were landing near ****. Leaving half her dress tangled in the cactus, she pulled free. A few stones were landing beyond her now. And as they watched, the road itself was engulfed by the rockslide. A hole had been scooped out where the explosion tore the first boulders away. Now the rocks above the hole loosened and crashed into it, and after that the slide seemed to flow like a river of mud, covering the road, spilling across it onto the level ground, burying everything in its path. This is no typical penny-a-word story penned for the pulps. Or maybe it is and maybe Frank Bonham just gave a damn about what he left behind.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-01-18 00:00:00 Kent Serg Fast-paced and action-packed with the baddies getting what they deserve without any moralizing exposition. Top-tier western.