Jon Sharpe (April 29, 1920 - November 3, 2004) was the original author of

The Trailsman ''The Trailsman'' is a series of short Western novels published since 1980 by Signet books, a division of New American Library. The series is still published under the name Jon Sharpe, the original author of the series, although it is now written ...

series of

Western novels Western fiction is a genre of literature set in the American Old West frontier and typically set from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century. Well-known writers of Western fiction include Zane Grey from the early 20th century and ...

. The century series, which has run since the early 1980s, was created by author Jon Messmann, who wrote most of the first 200 books in the series under the Jon Sharpe pseudonym until his retirement in the late 1990s (Messmann died in 2004). The Trailsman series still uses Jon Sharpe as a house name covering various ghostwriters (among them David Robbins,

Robert J Randisi Robert Joseph Randisi (born August 24, 1951) is an American author, editor and screenwriter who writes in the detective and Western genres. Biography Randisi has authored more than 650 published books and has edited more than 30 anthologies of sh ...

, J. B. Keller,

Bill Crider Bill Crider (July 28, 1941 – February 12, 2018) was an American author of crime fiction among other work. Biography He received a Master of Arts degree at the University of North Texas, in Denton. Later, he taught English at Howard Payne Unive ...

, Ed Gorman, Will C. Knott,

Robert Vardeman Robert Edward Vardeman (sometimes called Vardebob) (born 1947) is an American science fiction fan and writer. Career Robert E. Vardeman was born in Mineral Wells, Texas, but is a longtime resident of Albuquerque, New Mexico. He graduated from ...

John Edward Ames John Edward Ames (born December 30, 1949) is an American writer of novels and short stories from Toledo, Ohio. A critically acclaimed writer of western fiction, Ames began his career writing for pulp magazines before penning horror novels an ...

, and

James Reasoner James Reasoner (5 June 1953) is an American writer. He is the author of more than 350 novels and many short stories in a career spanning more than thirty years. Reasoner has used at least nineteen pseudonyms, in addition to his own name: Jim Austin ...

) under contract with the publisher. These books are best described as "adult" Westerns with lots of action. Another series created by Messmann,

Canyon O'Grady A canyon (from ; archaic British English spelling: ''cañon''), or gorge, is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have a natural tendency to cu ...

, was also attributed to Sharpe.

References

Western (genre) writers 1920 births 2004 deaths American writers {{US-writer-stub