An easygoing hired gun falls into a scheme to impersonate a sheriff, and then finds he likes being the good guy after all in Clair Huffaker's Badge for a Gunfighter.
Huffaker is a well-regarded paperback writer and screenwriter, but I had never run across one of his novels until I received this one in a box of books from a friend.
I understand now why his name is bandied about in genre circles; Badge for a Gunfighter is a cut above the typical western, with lean, solid writing and a funny, likeable protagonist.
But overall Huffaker hits all the comfortable beats; gunfighters who are badder than bad, a noble frontier widow and the son who needs somebody to look up to, and the like. A brutal finale is satisfying.
Recommended for fans of pulp westerns.
Huffaker is a well-regarded paperback writer and screenwriter, but I had never run across one of his novels until I received this one in a box of books from a friend.
I understand now why his name is bandied about in genre circles; Badge for a Gunfighter is a cut above the typical western, with lean, solid writing and a funny, likeable protagonist.
But overall Huffaker hits all the comfortable beats; gunfighters who are badder than bad, a noble frontier widow and the son who needs somebody to look up to, and the like. A brutal finale is satisfying.
Recommended for fans of pulp westerns.
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