The Rio Hondo Kid

The hired gunmen came to Mahon’s place to take him away and kill him. But instead of Mahon they found a black-dressed Texas boy with a fast gun, and left him for dead, taking his horse. They had made their first big mistake. In the town of Escopeta they met two more Texans, one a handsome blond giant, the other a small insignificant-looking individual, the sort of man one would pass in the street without a second glance. The hired gunmen passed him without a second glance and in so doing made their second, and biggest, mistake. For the small man was none other than the famous Rio Hondo gun wizard, by name of Dusty Fog. J. T. Edson was a former British Army dog-handler who wrote more than 130 Western novels, accounting for some 27 million sales in paperback. Edson’s works – produced on a word processor in an Edwardian semi at Melton Mowbray – contain clear, crisp action in the traditions of B-movies and Western television series. What they lack in psychological depth is made up for by at least twelve good fights per volume. Each portrays a vivid, idealized “West That Never Was”, at a pace that rarely slackens.