One Step Ahead of the Posse

by Walt A. Coburn

It just didn't figure. Young Boone was decent and square. Yet the man he called "father," Jawbone Smith, was a drunken, conniving horse thief. Then one day Boone learned that Jawbone wasn't really his dad, and that raised a different sort of problem - now Boone had to know, who was he? Breaking away from his outlaw apprenticeship with Jawbone was tough enough, but not half as dangerous as making the townspeople accept him as a decent citizen. Available only in Western 14.

237 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Michael Morrison · Rating 2 out of 5]

Actually 1.5 stars.
Though there are some interesting characters, others are inconsistent, some are caricatures, and very few are likable enough for us to care about them.
Though the book started fairly well, it soon degenerated. So much of the dialogue is hokey or written in that old style of Western fiction that became such a cliché that so-called mainstream writers and reviewers sneered at it and made fun of it and of Western literature generally.
Worse, almost everything that happens is coincidence.
More worse, the ending has two characters go on for extended paragraphs to explain the decades-old history that led to the story.
Mr. Coburn can do better. And has.