There was a time when the Western novel came roaring back, thanks to a flashy revival that ignited in the late 1970s. Adult Westerns, they called them; your run-of-the-mill tales with a spicy twist of love scenes. Publishers were desperate to breathe life into a fading genre, and for a while, it worked like a charm. Among these was the series Chance, published by Avon Books and penned under the pen name Clay Tanner by the Spur Award-nominated George W. Proctor (1946-2008). Dubbed The Maverick with a Winning Hand, the protagonist, Chance Sharpe, is a slick card shark who owns the riverboat Wild Card. You could easily argue that Proctor borrowed a page or several from the legendary Brett Maverick, but that’s a tale as old as the Wild West itself. Only twelve novels graced this series, published from 1986 to 1988.
Fast forward to my recent thrift store adventure, where I stumbled upon the ninth installment, Chance: Deadly Deal. Maybe it was fate, or perhaps just some cosmic irony, but this book felt oddly familiar. I distinctly remember having owned it in the 1990s, maybe not this exact paperback, but close enough. Back then, I was much too young to be reading Western yarns with sex scenes. I could almost picture my mom snagging it from a garage sale, blissfully unaware of the literary mischief I would engage in. I read everything I could get my hands on, regardless of age appropriateness, thinking I was wise beyond my years. Who knows what ever happened to that first copy? Perhaps it found its way to another garage sale. But I digress. There it sat amid the dust and knickknacks: Deadly Deal. The cover was a siren song, pulling me back into nostalgia, and I couldn't resist the urge to scoop it up.
