Books: Adventure Story

ROARING GUNS—David Statler—Simon & Schuster ($1).

This first novel moves at such a rate, contains so many fights, explosions, ambushes, traps, gun battles and get aways that even devoted lovers of adventure stories are likely to find themselves dazed by it. It begins when a cool Western customer named Tom decides to try his luck gambling. No more imprudent decision was ever reached by a peace-loving citizen, for Tom found himself in the thick of three murders, eight fist fights, nine gun battles, with 28 corpses strewing the scene, not counting Indians.

The trouble appears to have started when Bill Jhonson, a “scowling man who had a curled mustache,” took a card from his coat. Tom gritted his teeth and “could hardly wait till night to settle with him.” He riddled Bill Jhonson and all his bandit friends, then studied a map of a gold mine and said, “Guess I better go to sleep.” In the morning he tried to clean up Silver City and there was a terrific battle. ”Smoke filled the streets, the shouts of men were drowned in the gun fire, in every store the men of the sheriffs were dragging dead men out of their windows.” Tom got away on his faithful horse, Silver. “Suddenly a million Indians rushed at him.” He got away again. He got in an other fight, knocked his enemy down, asked “What’s that guy’s name,” when “something like an ape was clutching at his throat. He was startled by a voice that sounded like Bill Jhonson’s. He looked at the man and saw that it was Bill Jhonson!”

The Author. Now eleven, David Statler wrote Roaring Guns when he was eight, sitting in the breakfast room of the Statler home at Memphis, Tenn. and printing out the story—illustrating it himself—in a five-cent composition book. Son of the Memphis manager of the Continental Can Co., David is now in the sixth grade, plays tennis, wants a typewriter, and leans heavily on Ritta, the Statler cook, for literary criticism and guidance. Working on his first novel, Author Statler sought inspiration between chapters in a way open to very few novelists: rushing out, side, playing cowboys and Indians with his younger brother.