Longarm and the Whiskey Woman (Longarm No. 217)

Longarm and the Whiskey Woman, released in 1997, is no. 217 in the Longarm series of adult-themed western novels published by Jove Books, with authorship attributed to Tabor Evans, a house pseudonym used by multiple authors affiliated with Jove. The Longarm series centers upon Custis Long, a U.S. deputy marshal nicknamed Longarm (being the “long arm of the law”), who is based in Colorado. The series began in 1978 and was published continuously through 2015, with the final installment being no. 436, Longarm and the Model Prisoner. Multiple installments were set in Arkansas, including Longarm and the Arkansas Ambush (no. 156) and Longarm and the Ozark Angel (no. 283).

In Longarm and the Whiskey Woman, the titular character is sent by his superior, Billy Vail, to bust up an extensive moonshine ring in northern Arkansas. Somehow, moonshine in Arkansas is ending up colored with some agent and then bottled in “brand-name bottles that have federal stamps on them” and shipped to northern cities. The authorities suspect that much of the operation is based in “Yale County” in the Ozark Mountains (presumably based on Yell County in the Arkansas Valley), “which was peopled by a fierce and ingrown set of clans that didn’t like strangers and didn’t even much like each other.”

Longarm starts casting about for leads in Little Rock (Pulaski County), where he stays at the Albert Pike Hotel (a fictional creation unrelated to the 1929 structure of the same name). At a poker game, Longarm reveals that another player, Morton Colton, has been cheating, and in conversation with another player the next day, a banker named Bob Greene, Longarm learns that Colton “runs a protection outfit that makes sure the flow of whiskey and money don’t get interrupted,” with friends in law enforcement. After spending some time asking around town about whiskey, Longarm is apprehended by two deputies, who route him into an alleyway to be beaten by Colton, but Longarm gets the drop on them and kills one of the deputies. Another new acquaintance, Frank Carson, helps him escape.

Using two of his horses, Carson takes Longarm to other members of the Colton family who despise Morton; along the way, he mentions that agents of the Treasury Department occasionally show up in town, and that Carson himself is a whiskey buyer, shipping higher-proof Arkansas moonshine to his family’s distillery in Tennessee, where it is aged and sold. The two stop overnight at the cabin of Salem Colton before Carson takes Longarm the next day to Asa Colton, who runs the operation and lives with adult sons Mark and John and twenty-one-year-old daughter Sally, to whom Longarm feels an immediate attraction.

Since Longarm cannot return to Little Rock to wire Billy Vail for the $2,500 Asa Colton wants for his initial shipment of 2,000 gallons of whiskey, he entrusts Carson with the task. However, as soon as Carson is gone, Sally takes Longarm into the middle of a cornfield, strips, and says to him, “Come on, I choose you. Right now.” A few days later, they have another rendezvous in the cornfield, and Sally shows up at his bedroom that night, but they are interrupted by her two half brothers breaking in. (Carson had previously said that Mark’s jealous attitude toward his own half sister was because “in these hill countries and with these hill-country people, that’s damned near marriage material.”) Asa tells Longarm that “when a stranger comes in and goes to beddin’ down with a man’s daughter, there’d better be a marriage, or there’s gonna be a funeral.” The family arranges for Longarm to be married to Sally in three days, the day that the whiskey will be ready to ship.

When Carson shows up again, he informs Longarm that Morton Colton is on his way there, intending to kill Longarm. Morton and Longarm meet for a duel, but as they are waiting to draw, Mark tries to ambush Longarm with a shotgun, nicking him in the shoulder, but Longarm returns fire, killing both him and Morton. Asa understands that Longarm was only protecting himself, but he calls off the wedding, intending to send Sally to an aunt. But Asa agrees to sell Longarm this one shipment of whiskey, and the next morning, Longarm and Carson go down to a railroad siding, where all the illicit whiskey has already been loaded onto railroad cars to be picked up by the next passing train. As Longarm tries to arrest the two Treasury Department agents who have shown up for their bribes, Carson pulls a gun on him, and Longarm shoots him in the chest. After being operated on in Hot Springs (Garland County), Carson recovers and Longarm lets him go.

Jove Books was founded as Pyramid Books, which was established in 1949 and published a number of notable works of science fiction in the 1950s and 1960s, including Harry Harrison’s The Stainless Steel Rat, as well as various genre anthologies and comics. The publisher was bought by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1975 and renamed Jove, and four years later it was bought by the Putnam Berkley Group, eventually becoming an imprint of the Berkley Publishing Group. Jove Books expanded into other genres of fiction, including crime and mystery, romance, and western.

For additional information:
Evans, Tabor. Longarm and the Whiskey Woman. New York: Jove Books, 1997.

Staff of the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas