Code of the Mountain Man

The Last Mountain Man #8

by William W. Johnstone

Reliquishing his title as the fastest gun alive to raise a family, mountain man Smoke Jensen is forced to pick up his holster again when a group of desperadoes led by Lee Slater brings trouble to town and kills Jensen's wife. Reissue.

Genres: Westerns, Fiction

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

William W. Johnstone is the #1 bestselling Western writer in America and the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of hundreds of books, with over 50 million copies sold. Born in southern Missouri, he was raised with strong moral and family values by his minister father, and tutored by his schoolteacher mother. He left school at fifteen to work in a carnival and then as a deputy sheriff before serving in the army. He went on to become known as "the Greatest Western writer of the 21st Century." Visit him online at WilliamJohnstone.net.

Reviews

[Laur]

Smoke Jenson is a legendary mountain man who loves his wife Sally, loves his ranch that they have built together, loves children, and is kind to women and animals. But he is a man of principal and justice who will not tolerate evil - most especially to those he loves, his family, or innocent women and children.

A pack of trash just rode in and shot up the bank, the town, killed 2 little girls, and shot his wife, Sally. Ut oh, the gates of hello just opened up... it's gonna be a wild ride! Not only is he chasing justice, a $30,000 bounty has been put on his head. This is no little matter.. to anyone!

Audio Narrator J. Rodney Turner is my favorite reader for the Johnstone novels. His voice is an even keel grit for telling this story around a camp fire.

[John Simko]

You don't mess with family.

Once you get Smoke Jensen mad you had better be ready to pay the piper. Smoke goes on a hunting trip for the men who shot up Big Rock and then made the worse mistake of all. They shot his wife!!!!

[sitting on the edge of my chair for all his books]

Another great read. I can not put these books down. I know that they are fiction for the most part, but if William wishes to use actual names , ie RCMP, get the facts straight. If most of these stories came from the 1850's to the 1900's, the the RCMP were not formed until Feb 1,1920. So Smoke would really have to wait a long time to hand over the prisoners to the RCMP. Orior to the Formation of the RCMP,we had the north West Mounted police . Actually Canada was going to call them the North West Mounted Rifles, but our southern neighbors thought that the name sounded to war like, so it was changed to the NWMP.

[Violet]

I think I'm hooked on the Johnstone books. It's so nice to have a hero and recall the struggles of the people of the west in the 1800s. This story is maybe a little over the top when Smoke Jensen has to hold off between 50- 100 outlaws and bounty hunters. However, we want to believe that he can do anything, and he does. What a great plot !! He has Smoke devising all kinds of traps and other methods of besting the outlaws. Very entertaining, as usual.

[rick incremona]

This one started up a little rough, but got better as it went along. i feel like some of the point of view breaks could have been separated better. some breaks have the stars between paragraphs and others just led right into a new set of dialogue without warning. All-in-all i liked it. I love the goofy stereotypical formula of a shoot-em-up western. to expect anything beyond that is silly. Now onto "Pursuit of the Mountain Man"

[Lucy Morin]

Smoke Jenson last mountain man

I really liked the books on preacher and the books about Smoke are different but same theme. Honest strong men helping others and sometimes theirselves against evil men

[larry brashear]

Excellent!

Another great book by this wonderful writer. In the very near future I will have read all of his books.

[Kevin Key]

Superman of the mountains. Another great Johnstone novel!

[Richard Guerrero]

Enjoyed the eighth book of Smoke Jensen series. He already had his first wife murdered, should not of shot his second wife, Sally.

[Gwen Hopkins]

Excellent.

[Steve]

This was like a spaghetti western film. I could just picture it all in my mind as I was reading this.

[Amanda]

this book is Control Alt Revolt level bad.

[Robert W Waterman]

SUper story

I have read most of this authors works and I must say I have enjoyed them all. Hope this author never quits his wriying.

[George L. Halenkamp]

Non stop action!

Many of the relationships and much of Smoke’s history is introduced in this book. Read it carefully. Many references in later books.

[Aaron Moats]

cheesy but fun

[Rob Smith, Jr.]

After a number of poorly constructed tales by the Johnstone Clan I finally ride up to a good one that revs up and has me flying through the pages. This is one of the best of the first six Smoke Jensen books I've read so far.

The best part of this book is that it's NOT about still another town taken over by bad guys and Smoke Jensen goes about extracting them. The story is the most involved of the series so far. There are a number of levels to the story and there are elements introduced that are likely not expected.

The first chapters of the book have an element of character's faith that is heavily used. Odd that the other 10+ Johnstone Clan books I've read do not have any where near as much references to the Christian bible. It's only the first chapters of this book and doesn't come up again. Wonder if someone else wrote the first chapters?

A real downside to the book is the massive amounted of dead bodies. I'm not complaining about the body. It's just that a story can bogged down as much by incessant action as the lack of it. Matthew Reilly being the worse case of replacing story with action. This had me knock a star off.

Overall, the book is exciting and much fun to read.

Bottom line: I recommend the book.

[Shirl]

Over the past four months I have been reading the Mountain Man series by William W. Johnstone. They are a throwback to the old west and come complete with rugged turrain, outlaws, Indians, and heroes. I enjoyed these books for the simple reason that I feel transported back to a simpler time when right was right, wrong was wrong, and there wasn't nearly so much gray. The reader gets to learn alot about what it was like for the men and women who broke open the territory but especially we get to cheer on an old fashioned hero or two. You will enjoy this trip back to the mid 1800's and you'll willingly cheer for the good guys who are interesting and funny characters, and hate the villains. Enjoy!

[Brian]

Pretty good western. The main character, Smoke Jensen is the last mountain man while the west is changing and becoming more 'civilized'. What I like about the Smoke Jensen books is the way that he is so invincible! This is the second book I've read about Smoke Jensen. I listened to this on Audio CD and I would recommend it to anyone. It had aobut 20 different voices and was really fun to listen too. The thing that I really liked about this book was that it had a lot of comedy in it. Fun read.

[Dennis F. Hyde]

Code of the Mountain Man

William W. Johnstone is a superb story teller. Nobody does western as well. Every page full of excitement and suspenseful anticipation. You will not be disappointed in this exciting novel. I highly recommend this book to all you western fans. So, "Giddy Up."

[Ken White]

Code of the Mountain Man

One of the best books by William W. Johnstone that I have read. This book keep my interest from the first page to the last page. This book has a lot of action in it. If you like a western book with a lot of action this is the one for you to read.

[Jerry Blackerby]

This was one of the older Johnstone books, which I had not read. Typical Johnstone. I loved it, as I have almost all of his books.

[Steve]

So far my favorite of the last mountain man series. Of them all so far this one as a stand alone would make an amazing movie.

[Mike Capanda]

Same story line as the others the bad guys r out to get smoke ! But there is just something about johnstones writing style that keeps you wrapped in the story ! I loved it

[Little Timmy]

Very good western series. The story of Smoke Jensen, trained by the last of the mountain men as a boy. If you like men's adventure and westerns then you will enjoy the series. Recommended

[Peggy Barnett]

Wow

There is enough action in this one to keep anyone reading until the end . As always the writing and flow is green.

[Ahmad Morid]

Good book but most of the action was copy and paste but the ending was good