Draw Down The Lightning

by Ben Bridges

Carter O'Brien was greased lightning with a gun, the best freelance fighting man in the business. That's why the greenhorn wanted to hire him. The trouble was, he had been sworn to secrecy about his own mysterious mission. Someone else knew about it though: two attempts had already been made on the greenhorn's life. O'Brien decided to tag along for a while, little knowing that he would soon face his toughest challenge...and get the surprise of his life.

242 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2007

About the author

For as long as I can remember, I always wanted to be a writer, but it was my Dad, Henry Whitehead, who really fostered my interest in the west. As a security man employed by a large chemical company, he often found himself working the nightshift by himself, and to pass the long, lonely hours he would hand-copy pictures from old Buffalo Bill Annuals and then fetch them home for me to colour in.

During the day, Dad also made up western stories and dictated them into our old reel-to-reel tape recorder, so that I could listen to them when I got home from school. He even added sound effects as he went along, wiggling his fingers in a bowl of water to give the impression of outlaws fording a shallow stream, or bursting balloons to simulate gunfire. So it's really no wonder that I eventually developed such an interest in the west.

As I grew older, I started reading just about every western I could lay my hands on. I began with J T Edson's Floating Outfit novels and eventually moved on to the Larry and Stretch westerns of Marshall Grover (a.k.a. Leonard F Meares). Along the way, I also started writing westerns of my own, the adventures of Clint Jones, Railroad Detective, being among the earliest.

Reviews

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

For starters, Ben Bridges is the pen name of writer David Whitehead. This year, 2014, marks his 30th as a published writer of western fiction. His first novel, The Silver Trail, featured a character named Carter O’Brien, and it was the start of a series that reached #14 with this one, Draw Down the Lightning.

Originally published in 2007 by Robert Hale Ltd., it has now been revived as an ebook and can be read on your kindle. London-born and British enough to have worked for the BBC, Whitehead has an ear and a feel for the genre that are estimable.

Read my review and an interview with the author at my blog.