J.T. Edson Books In Order

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Publication Order of Standalone Novels

J.T. Edson was one of the highly respected novelists from The United Kingdom. He was fond of writing his novels and short stories based on the escapism adventure, western, as well as the police procedural genres, writing around 137 novels in his career. Author Edson was born on February 17, 1928, as John Thomas Edson and died on July 17, 2014. From the year 1950 onwards, he used to reside near Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire. All his life, author Edson was involved in writing books and novels, but gave it up completely in the year 2005 due to his ill health. He was born in a tiny mining village located near the border of the Derbyshire County, England, called Whitwell. Many of his ancestors used to work in the coal mines. The parents of author Edson got married in Whitwell, after which he was born as their first kid. When his father died in the year 1928, his mother was left alone as a 23 year old widow. She went on to marry again when author Edson reached the age of 18. As a youngster, Edson used to visit the small cinemas in the towns of England very often and used to watch escapist adventure fares. All the time when his mother used to work, he used to be busy watching one or the other show. Eventually, he became very much obsessed with the Western and Escapist Adventure serials. Later in his writing career, author Edson wrote in the appendices and foreword of many of his books how he rewrote the adventure serials and the cowboy movies that he watched in the cinema. In those types of movies and serials, author Edson was mainly intrigued by the mechanics behind card cheating, dressing and speaking style of the Westerners, the reason behind the gun jamming of the baddies.

Initially, when he started writing, he was helped by one of his school teachers, who encouraged and assisted him to develop his writing skills. At the age of 18, author Edson went on to join the army. He served for a period of 12 years in the British Army, mainly as one of the Dog Trainers. During the time of his service, he used to get cooped up in the barracks for longer periods of time and used to utilize them for reading the books of the popular escapist writers like Nelson Nye, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Edgar Wallace, etc. Also, Edson used to get involved in watching films starring Errol Flynn, John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Audie Murphy, etc. Among all these, Audie Murphy was his most favorite. During the 1950s, author Edson took the help of a typewriter to get along with his typing and finished writing 10 western novels by the time he retired from his service. However, he had not taken writing seriously yet and considered it mainly as a hobby. Soon, he left the army to get married. While raising his family of a wife and 6 children, author Edson thought of turning his hobby into a means to earn an income so that he could support the family. He was lucky that one of his books won the second prize in a literary competition organized by the Brown and Watson Ltd. They saw the talent in him and agreed to publish the next 46 books of his career.

The writings of author Edson also helped the company to collect a major part of their revenue. On realizing the need for some additional income, author Edson also served as a fish shop proprietor and a postman. As he continued to gain success as a writer, he wrote 5 short story series. During the late 1960s, author Edson joined the Corgi Books which helped him to forge ahead in his writing career. The collaboration also allowed him to get exposed to a number of publishing houses in the country. It also served as an opportunity for him to try writing different genres of books and series. In the later stages of his career, author Edson claimed that he used to write only for money. In one of the interviews given to the Time magazine in the year 1999, he accepted that unlike the other authors like Louis L’Armour, he had no desire of living in the Wild West. In fact, he never rode a horse in his life and considered such things as highly dangerous and bloody uncomfortable at both ends. Being remotely from West, author Edson got the chance to be placed in the company of famous Western novelists like Zane Grey. Author Edson gave much importance to accuracy historical details in his writings. He did not overburden his stories with too much of the research work.

One of the successful novel series written by author J.T. Edson is titled as ‘Civil War’ series. This series is comprised of a total of 13 books, which were published between the years 1968 and 1996. One of the books published initially in this series is titled as ‘Mississippi Rider’. The Dell publishers released this book in the year 1970. Author Edson has described the main characters in the plot in the form of Stone Hart and Belle Boyd. Author Edson has started the novel by depicting Belle Boyd as a young beauty coming from the Louisiana bayou. She appears to be a hard riding girl who had watched her parents getting killed by agents coming from the North in cold blood. Now, she is desperate to take revenge and had joined the Great Cause. Due to this, she is taken to the center of a nation, which seems to be divided in two parts. There, she gets closer to the killers of her parents. Belle joins the a secret service and tests her wit, fighting skills, and courage against the best agents of the Union. With the help of her daring,courage, and undercover activities, Belle Boyd becomes successful in spawning a legend. But, it appears that her greatest challenge of her life is lying ahead. She is asked to go on a deadly mission behind the lines of the enemies in order to stop a highly sophisticated weapon from getting entry into the war.

Another popular book written by author Edson in the series was published under the title ‘The Big Gun’. It was published in 1973 by Corgi Books. Author Edson has introduced the central characters in this book in the role of Red Blaze and Dusty Fog. At the start, Edson has described a deadly weapon from the Yankees. It was a rifled cannon called Parrot 30 Pounder. The weapon was 11 feet long and weighed over 4 tons. Being able to throw devastating shells more than 2 miles away, the weapon was considered to be highly dangerous. It was purely a hell produced by the Yankees. With the help of this Big Gun, the troops of the Union forces were planning to bombard the Rebel forces stationed along the line of Arkansas. The Yankees were believed to be the only ones who could tot around the Big Gun. Now, Dusty Fog is given the task of stopping the Big Gun from causing devastation. He is believed to be the only one who has the ability and skills to put the Big Gun out of the service. And is succeeds in doing so, he will be able to save the lives of numerous innocent soldiers near the Arkansas line.