Double Cross at the Circle C by Eli Hawke

Thanks to PR Newswire

Title: Double Cross at the Circle C

Author: Eli Hawke (nom de plume of Humphrey Birtwhistle)

Publisher: not known 

Source book: Gone West by Carola Dunn 

Humphrey Birtwistle went to the United States as a young man. He travelled around the West as a snake oil salesman and later was more successful with a claim on a silver mine. He sold his claim, married a schoolmarm from New Mexico, returned to his family property in Derbyshire and began to write western pulp fiction under the nom de plume Eli Hawke.

Eli Hawke’s books are fairly successful and Birtwhistle employs a typist, Sybil Sutherby (who was at school with Daisy Dalrymple) who becomes more of a private secretary, then almost a member of his family. Birtwhistle falls ill with bronchitis and pneumonia; he takes a very long time to recover and is unable to write, so Sybil becomes his ghost writer. Eli Hawke’s books include The Stranger from Dead Man’s Gulch, Six-Shooter for Hire, Queen of the Prairie, Lonesome Creek and Sunset Canyon.

Birtwhistle has already written about two thirds of Double Cross at the Circle C when he gets ill, the publisher’s deadline is fast approaching, secretary Sybil has to finish the book herself… and then an editor notices the difference in style. Apparently the Eli Hawke books have been selling well enough to a certain audience and the editor doesn’t see why the author should go mucking about with a tried and tested formula. But the book begins to sell better than previous Eli Hawke westerns.

Sybil is a better writer than Birtwhistle. He is good at describing the landscape of the American west; his descriptions are marvellously vivid, but too wordy. He’s good at plots as well; the next book, Halfbreed Hero, is based on Othello (only with a happy ending). Daisy tries to read Lonesome Creek but Birtwhistle’s characters are two-dimensional and hard to care about, and he writes dialogue very badly. Halfbreed Hero, however, is mostly written by Sybil and the publisher has decided it is good enough to be printed as a solid cloth and board book rather than a cheap paperback.

[Spoiler] If you read the blurb on the back of Gone West you will know that Humphrey Birtwhistle dies. Sybil decides she will keep writing. But not using the Eli Hawke nom de plume.

Thanks to The Legacy Gallery