He died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, February 10, 1948.[4]
Writing career
Young's first published story was "The Lady's Picture", in The Cavalier magazine, in March 1913.[2] He began writing fiction for the magazine Adventure in 1917. His first stories for Adventure were a series of crime thrillers about a gun-wielding gambler, Don Everhard. Magazine historian Robert Sampson argued the Don Everhard stories influenced later writers of Hardboiled crime fiction such as Carroll John Daly.[5] Young soon became one of the most popular of Arthur Sullivant Hoffman's roster of authors for Adventure.[6] He followed the Everhard stories with a series of South Seas tales about Hurricane Williams, an adventurer who shuns "civilized" society.[7]
Young's novel, Days of '49 (1925), a historical narrative about the settlement of California during the Gold Rush, was well received by contemporary reviewers. James Oliver Curwood declared that Days of '49 was "the best book he had read for ten years", while Edwin Bjorkman compared Young's work to that of Walter Scott.[8][9]Huroc the Avenger is a historical adventure set in the seventeenth century, and revolves around the titular hero's quest for revenge against a ruthless Venetian trading family.[2]
Young's humorous Westerns about "Red" Clark became his most commercially successful series; these tales first appeared in Adventure and Short Stories before being collected in book form.[7] The Clark stories were especially popular in Britain and most of the stories appeared in hardbacks for the UK library market.[1]
^ abP. R. Meldrum, "Young, Gordon (Ray)" in Twentieth Century Western Writers, edited by Geoff Sadler. St. James Press, 1991,ISBN0-912289-98-8 ,(pp. 743–44)
^ abcdTom Krabacher, "Gordon Ray Young:Forgotten Adventurer", in Blood N' Thunder Magazine Summer 2010, ISBN0-9795955-7-6 (p.60-78).
^Richard R. Lingeman, Sinclair Lewis: Rebel From Main Street. Random House, 2002 ISBN0-679-43823-8 (p. 71).