I like Westerns that are really just updated stories of knights or samurais. A lot of the old Spaghetti Westerns were those kinds of stories. Clint Eastwood’s man with no name in A Fist Full of Dollars was such a hero. He rides into town in the first act to see injustice, and by the end, he has vanquished the evil. I’m not giving anything away here. Everyone knows it’s going to happen. So many of those cowboys riding about in fiction are really just knights, and I love…

About a year ago, Michael Torres, one of my favorite students, came to my office and told me that he wasn’t going to be transferring for at least a year. It was a kick in the teeth. He’d been accepted to UCR’s creative writing program, which is a tremendously good program, and as a community college professor, my great joy is to see students transfer to places like that.

The problem was that he hadn’t finished the last math class he’d need to transfer. It’s a common problem…

            W. S. Gager’s A Case of Hometown Blues follows Mitch Malone, award winning journalist, as he returns to the chaos and evil of the Michigan town where he grew up. Malone is a success out in the larger world, but when he comes home, he – like the rest of us – reverts back to the social status he had when he was in high school. And like for most of us, that’s not good.

            While he’s dealing with this reversion, he also has to deal with the murder of his old…