HANGTOWN

Another story of living by the gun but dying by the rope. 

CORD

Steven Krauzer and William Kittredge’s first collaborative effort as “Owen Rountree”. 

I actually remember very little about this book, but do recall seeing only 8 of them before Ballantine stopped publishing Westerns. 

Guess it’s time to re-read the entire series.

KID STARK

Greg Tobin started out as a writer, wound up as an editor, then went back to being a writer again.  Most recently I remember seeing, in passing, Greg’s name on a book either about ancient Egypt or ancient Rome. 

He’s written a lot of Westerns under pseudonyms but he did three of ‘em that I know of under his own name for Ballantine.  Glad all that paid off for him in this way because Ballantine always did a nice packaging job. 

SAM HOOK

The only thing more fun than discussing my admiration for Richard Wheeler is to read one of his books.

I read SAM HOOK when it first came out (Richard gave me a hardcover copy!) and by the time the paperback hit stores a year later, I grabbed it as well.  Really love the packaging here. 

As I get older, I find that I can’t quite recall everything I read in this book over 20 years ago.  Therefore I get the treat of reading it again and in many cases it will be as if I’m reading it for the first time.

One of Richard’s strong suits is fleshing out his characters extremely well.  The books become character studies – that just happen to be set in the frame of a Western.  These kinds of books are more fascinating to me than some of the cardboard characters I’ve read about in other Westerns.

Can’t go wrong with Richard Wheeler.  Check him out!