Stringer on Dead Man's Range Lib/E

Stringer #2

by Lou Cameron, Peter Berkrot (Reading)

Sheriff Commodore Perry Owens just lost his first election in seventeen years. Maybe folks in the Arizona Territory were ready for a change, and then again, maybe Stringer ought to go have a look-see. The trouble is that Perry has vanished and everyone who knew him is either dead or vanished too. But when hot lead and hard knuckles start flying, Stringer's belt-buckle deep in ghostly mystery and willing women. And even if the ghosts may be hokum, the women are flesh-and-blood beauties.

Genres: Westerns

Audio CD

First published September 1, 1987

Reviews

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first of the series on Scribd, so I'm reviewing it. There are ebook copies on Amazon, but they're pretty overpriced, in my book. You cannot charge over five bucks for cover art that shabby.

Anyway, this is a pretty interesting take on the usual Western. Stringer isn't a gunslinger, but a journalist, so he's investigating the usual badman shenanigans to sell copy, not just out of the goodness of his heart. It's also set in the 'New Old West' of the post-1800s, with Model-Ts and such around.

Cameron writes convincingly of the desert setting and historical detail. There's a sparing amount of violence and sex about on par with Ian Fleming's old Bond novels. It's not really one of those murder mysteries where you can solve it yourself, because Cameron has Stringer check out evidence off-screen, so to speak, but it's all compelling enough and seems to hold together well enough.

The last mystery I read was basically a matter of you know the whole gist of it, it's just who specifically is doing it, and I think this is more fun because Cameron really keeps you in suspense about just what the hell is going on. It amounts to a land grab, yeah, but it's a very novel way to go about it, so yeah, four stars, well-earned.

[Richard Mann · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little more slowly paced than most of the series. Most of the series build the books around some historical event (the creation of the Salton Sea, Pancho Villa, Tom Horn, etc.) but this one doesn't. It's just a standard western. Nevertheless, Lou Cameron's writing is always fun to read.