The Reckless Gun

by Joseph A. West

Book Overview

Gunfire explodes in Dodge City after a one-armed hardware clerk opens fire on a local rancher-revenge for his father's death, and $30,000 in stolen loot. Now, with the rancher's boys out for blood,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0451219236
• ISBN13: 9780451219237
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Signet Book
• Length: 276 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 4.2" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

The last shot of the Civil War

Many veterans of the Civil War headed West in search of new lives, taking their old resentments with them, and many a showdown on the frontier probably resulted from lingering sectional partisanship. In this fourth of his series of original Gunsmoke novels, Joseph A. West has taken off from that fact to construct a complex and tightly plotted tale. Tom Gillespie, a quiet and well-liked Dodge resident who lost an arm during the War, suddenly erupts in violence, shooting down a Texas rancher named Col. Calvin W. Roberts--whom he describes as a "damn Yankee"! When he tells his story to Marshal Matt Dillon, it becomes clear why. But Roberts's foreman and partner, Bull Stromick, has just as much to lose as Roberts did, and it doesn't take long for him to start stirring up lynching sentiment. Complicating the situation is a mysterious woman who calls herself Chastity Heath (and who may be the person who shot a bushwhacker off Dillon's back in a dark alley) and a party of hungry Arapahoes scaring the settlers in off the outlying homesteads. Only by proving Gillespie's allegations to be true (or not) can Matt hope to save the man from a lynching and his town from blowing wide open. West finally seems to be getting a handle on his background: he correctly describes Matt as a United States Marshal. But his continuity still isn't quite under control, as he has Newly O'Brien and Quint Asper living in Dodge at the same time. And he commits one really egregious historical blunder when he implies that a man from the Deep South (presumably a former Confederate) could become an officer in the U.S. Army (they couldn't, though of course some Southerners didn't fight for their region--but if that's what he had in mind, he should have found a way to clarify it). He does, however, skilfully handle a number of plot lines and manages to keep everything under control and tell an exciting story. I'd say his mastery of GS is improving, and as a Western this is a very worthwhile entry.