Thursday 7 August 2008

Spur #1

HIGH PLAINS TEMPTRESS
as by Dirk Fletcher
Leisure, 1982

Spur McCoy was quick, smart and smooth enough to get any woman he wanted. He’d just joined the government’s new Secret Service Agency, and as his first assignment west of the Mississippi, he was sent after a vicious band known as Rontrell’s Raiders. They were all ex-soldiers, as ready to kill, rape and loot as they were during the bloodiest days of the war. Now, in Fargo, just one man dared stand against them, and he was the kind of man who never left a job undone.

Although this author reveals who Rontrell is right at the beginning he also hooks the reader by not divulging the reason why Rontrell is subjecting Fargo to this reign of terror, and it isn’t until the end that the answer is revealed, thus giving Spur a difficult case to crack.

The storytelling is told in a straight forward style, in fast moving prose, that makes the book very readable. There’s plenty of action – of more than one type – the violent kind being quite brutal at times.

Spur is portrayed as a man who doesn’t like sharing information, or wanting help, in tracking down Rontrell and discovering why he kills. There are one or two twists thrown in at the end and all the plot threads are tied up neatly.

The above title may confuse some readers of this blog as they maybe unaware of this book as there is another Spur #1, the book called Rocky Mountain Vamp. In fact there are two book 2’s and 3’s. All the books are different and I can only guess as to why the series started at number one again. Possibly because the covers on the original first three were being used on Ramsay Thorne’s Renegade series which was being published at the same time? These cover painting clearly being the wrong time period for the Spur series too.

1 comment:

Chris said...

Score! This one's available used on Amazon for $2.50. I'm going to check at my library, but if it's not there, it's nice to know it's available for cheap. Thanks for the review, as always.