Hot Pursuit is number 18 in the lusty 'White Squaw' adult western series, which
chronicled the adventures of Rebecca Caldwell, who is part White, part Sioux
and all woman. In previous installments a 14 year old Rebecca had been betrayed
by her Uncle Ezekiel and Uncle Virgil who sold the young girl and her mother to
the Oglala tribe. Iron Calf, the leader of the tribe, just so happened to be
Rebecca's real father, due to the fact that he raped Rebecca's mother 14 years
previously. As an adult, Rebecca leaves the tribe and sets out to get revenge
on her Uncles. She then sets out to get revenge on Bitter Creek Jake Tully, the
leader of the outlaw gang that her Uncle Ezekiel and Uncle Virgil were a part
of. She then sets out to get revenge on Roger Styles, the brains behind the the
Bitter Creek Jake Tully gang that her uncles were a part of. Rebecca is nothing
if not meticulous when it comes to hunting down men with an increasingly
tenuous connection to her enslavement.
Pseudonymous author E.J. Hunter managed to get 24 books out of this saga,
written between the early 1980s and the early 1990s, while simultaneously
penning 13 books in the similar 'Head Hunter' adult western series. As you
might expect, given such a heavy workload, the White Squaw series is assembly
line in nature and prone to repetition. After you've gone through a few White
Squaws, there is the inescapable feeling that once you've read one White Squaw
book, you've pretty much read them all. In that sense I'd draw comparisons with
the slasher movies from that period, who likewise rarely diverted from a basic
formula yet whose audience still seemed happy to keep coming back for more and
more of the same.
The White Squaw books are reliably committed to gratuitous sex and violence,
rarely a chapter goes by without someone having their brains blown out, a
throat being slashed, or a lengthy description of Rebecca's horizontal
pleasures. Having entered the series as a dandyish white collar criminal with a
greedy eye on power and wealth, Hot Pursuit finds Roger Styles at a low ebb.
Having had too many of his money making schemes thwarted by Rebecca, Roger has
been reduced to heading a gang of lowly bank robbers. Trouble is that he's not
very good at it. Roger's ineptitude at executing bank robberies regularly
reducing his men and innocent parties to bloody, bullet ridden messes,
providing a chunk of Hot Pursuit's extreme gore content. Further gore
highlights of the book include one of Roger's men having his eye gouged out by
a snake, and another character being repeatedly shot in the stomach, then
squirting liquid faeces out of the holes.
Much less welcome is Hunter's dedication to violence and sexual abuse aimed at
children. It is the series' most distinct and uncomfortable characteristic, one
that shows no signs of abating in Hot Pursuit. In the opening chapters alone,
Hunter has a child shotgunned during a robbery, and another child crushed under
the fleeing robbers' horses, followed by two little girls being used as target
practice by Roger's men. Somewhere between books 6 and 10, Rebecca got to give
Roger an almighty kick in the balls, an injury that turned him off adult women
and somehow left him with an attraction to young boys and girls instead. In Hot
Pursuit though, Roger shows some slight restraint by excluding himself when one
of his men decides to rape a 13 year old girl during a raid on her family home.
Leaving Roger to torture himself with regret 'small, young, vulnerable...god,
how he wanted her'.
Rebecca herself isn't without an inappropriate side either. Early on in the
book she is consumed by thoughts about Joey, who she left behind in her pursuit
of Roger. Joey 'would run stark naked if he could get away with it...he had not
the least inhibition about his body or it's functions'. Which doesn't sound too
bad, until you realise that Joey is her 13 year old stepson. This troubling
aspect to the entire White Squaw series could merely have been shock value on
E.J. Hunter's part, or an attempt to demystify the old west as a place of
chivalry or where the innocence of childhood was sacred. Even so, Hunter's
inability to stay away from underage topics means that its hard not to end up
thinking ill of him, and wonder if the man's circuits were rather haywire.
As the series progresses Rebecca's initial position as a sworn enemy of
wrongdoers tends to take a backseat to Rebecca as a sworn enemy of virginity,
with the White Squaw frequently helping young boys ease their way into manhood.
Such is the case in Hot Pursuit, which is one of the White Squaw books that
focuses more on the carnal side of Rebecca Caldwell...who is a very mucky squaw
indeed in this one. Her initial love interest is 17 year old Andrew Purcell, a
tongue tied, would be poet, who sets a fire in Rebecca's loins due to him
reminding her of 'Four Horns' Rebecca's dead, native American husband. It's
anyone's guess how a pail faced, sexually inexperienced, mother dominated wimp
reminds Rebecca of a bronzed, muscular brave, who wasn't called Four Horns for
nothing. Still Andrew makes for a keen student and an exhausting night with
Rebecca leaves him smitten with her, if a little worse for wear "I was
stiff all night and now I'm a bit sore" he admits. His enthusiasm to learn
the art of lovemaking leads Rebecca to nickname him 'Randy Andy'. Yes, as if
this book couldn't be more unsavoury it has a character who shares a nickname
with the former Duke of York.
Hunter does at least allow Rebecca the freedom to have the same 'love em and
leave em' attitude as male heroes in Men's Adventure books. Rebecca's exploits
leaving behind a slew of menfolk who either die tragically at the end of these
books, or are destined to get their hearts broken by Rebecca. Poor Randy Andy
quickly gets given the push in favour of Robert Russel, an older, more manly,
ranch owner. Tellingly even when he is writing sex scenes between consenting
adults, Hunter can't help steering things back to his usual deviant territory.
Rebecca getting her kicks by forcing Robert to embarrassingly recall his
earliest attempts at masturbation and his childhood fumblings with a vaqueros'
daughter.
Hot Pursuit does slightly distinguish itself from the White Squaw pack, by the
fact that Oscar Wilde, of all people, shows up as a supporting character in it.
Although to be honest, his appearance is something of a damp squib. Kept at
arms length from the sex and violence, Wilde sticks around to deliver a few
quips about America, before walking off in a huff after one too many gay put
downs from Rebecca. I do find it hard to believe that a handbags at dawn
confrontation between Oscar Wilde and Rebecca Caldwell would result in Rebecca
emerging victorious and Wilde being left lost for words. Wilde's tremendous wit
is thoroughly lacking in the portrayal of him here. This combined with the fact
that Hunter doesn't appear to care much for him ("Sort of an out and out
sissy, some folks say"), makes the motivation for dragging dear old Oscar
into this one a doubly odd decision.
As you might expect from a later entry in a long running but quicky cranked out
paperback series, Hot Pursuit is something of a congealed mess of ideas that
don't really go anywhere. Oscar Wilde's appearance is an example of this, as is
the Randy Andy subplot. Which sees him moping off in such a bitter, heartbroken
mood that you expect Randy Andy to reappear later on in the book as an
adversary of Rebecca or seeking a reconciliation, but never does. Maybe he
ended up at Pizza Express instead. I suspect its a reflection on Hunter's
weariness when it came to writing White Squaw books at this point, that the
futility of her never ending quest for revenge is starting to take its toll on
Rebecca. By the time of Hot Pursuit she's been on the road, hunting wrongdoers
for several years and has lost so many people along the way, that she is starting
to crave a way out and an exit into a civilised normality. Like Bronson's Paul
Kersey though, all of Rebecca's attempts at a peaceful, pacifistic life seem
destined to be shattered by bad guys with an unfortunate tendency to rape and
murder all her loved ones. Forcing Rebecca back into Mrs. Vigilante mode and of
course necessitating further sequels.
The White Squaw books are never dull, but they are constantly sick and
disturbed. What's retrospectively amusing about the series is how- unlike XXX
movie westerns such as A Dirty Western and Sweet Savage- on the surface these
books could easily have been mistaken for mainstream westerns, rather than
pages and pages of written hardcore pornography. Begging the question did
anyone ever buy these books for siblings thinking they were innocuous, old
fashioned yarns. A decision that would have given any western obsessed kid a
treat, and any western obsessed grandparent a coronary. Needless to say,
partner, best ya keep that White Squaw collection out of Gramp's reach, unless
of course his name happens to be Big Chief Chickenhawk.
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