History Creator / JTEdson

* UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar: The setting for [[CaptainObvious The Civil War Series]].

* ObfuscatingStupidity: In the ''Company Z'' novels, Sergeant Jubal Branch plays the part of ignorant hick, deliberately mispronouncing words, in order to make criminals underestimate him.

** Calamity Jane's bullwhip.

John Thomas "J.T." Edson was an English writer of Westerns.

He was born in 1928 near the border of the county of Derbyshire, England, in a small mining village, Whitwell, and was obsessed with Westerns from an early age. In his 20s and 30s, he spent 12 years in the British Army as a dog trainer. It was during this time that he began writing to alleviate boredom during long periods in barracks.

* AnimalStampede: A cattle stampeded features prominently in JT's first novel ''Trail Boss''. As one of the staple dangers of trail life, they also occur in several of his later books that feature {{Cattle Drive}}s

* {{Bandito}}

* ChekhovsGun: In ''Return to Backsight'', Dusty teaches an inexperienced gun-handler the danger of accidentally shooting yourself if you don't follow the correct loading sequence for a Remington Double Derringer. Guess what the lady villain does in the final chapter?

* DeadMansHand: "Deadwood August 2nd 1876" in ''J.T.'s Hundredth'' is a fictionalised account of the killing of Wild Bill Hickcok. In it, Hickcok has just discarded his fith card and is reaching for another when he is shot.

* TheEeyore: Billy Jack

* ApparentlyUnrelatedMurders: In ''Point of Contact'', a murderer hits a string of seemingly unconnected people: different sexes, ages, occupations, social classes, etc. The connection turns out to be they all served on the same jury.

* ExpectingSomeoneTaller: Dusty Fog who, though strongly built, is only about five feet five inches tall and continually overlooked by strangers who know him only by reputation. Usefully, one of his associates, Mark Counter, really is well over six feet tall with big muscles and the face and figure of a Greek god, and from time to time Mark pretends to be Dusty in order that strangers will blab secrets when he is not around but the insignificant-looking real Dusty is. WordOfGod is that Fog was based on AudieMurphy, who was himself of no great size (and just as much of a BigDamnHero).

* DivorcedInstallment: ''Blonde Genius'' was originally written as a plot for a ''StTrinians'' movie.

* ShownTheirWork: In spades.

* BecauseImJonesy: In ''The Bad Bunch'', Belle Boyd poses as Belle Starr in order to infiltrate an all-female outlaw gang. Unfortunately for her, the real Belle Starr had the same idea.

* ChekovsGun: In ''Return to Backsight'', Dusty teaches an inexperienced gun-handler the danger of accidentally shooting yourself if you don't follow the correct loading sequence for a Remington Double Derringer. Guess what the lady villain does in the final chapter?

* FastestGunInTheWest: Dusty Fog (except that Doc Leroy is a hairsbreadth faster with a single gun versus Dusty's ambidextrous pair; but Dusty is the one whose name gets mentioned). Mark Counter is a fraction slower than either and Waco a similar distance behind him; none of the four have ever been beaten.

* MarijuanaIsLSD: Edson was violently opposed to marijuana use and any time it is portrayed in his novels, it is shown in a negative light. However, he also appears to have had no idea of what its effects actually were, and it was portrayed as everything from a date rape drug to driving people into a beserk frenzy like PCP.

* UnintentionallyNotoriousCrime: In ''The Professional Killers'', a pair of hit-men commit MurderByMistake when they gun down a man who matches the description of their target as he gets off a train. It turns out their target had never got on the train and the man they killed was senior sheriff's deputy.

* NakedInMink: In ''The Professional Killers'', the police raid the house of a burgular and find his girlfriend wearing a recently stolen mink stole and nothing else.

* QuicksandSucks: In ''The Law of the Gun'', the main bad guy perishes when he attempts to escape the heroes by diving of the trail through the cane brakes along the Rio Grande and plunging into quicksand where he vanishes without trace.