A tough, unbending lawman stalks a nearby town where a group of drunken cowboys accidentally shot a man through a window; and when the cowboys--including an affluent rancher and his son--won't come willingly, violence ensues in Grant Freeling's Lawman.
This is a novelization of a Michael Winner film, written by Gerald Wilson, and starring Burt Lancaster, a 70s film that somehow I've missed seeing along the way. As for the novelization, there is some debate whether Grant Freeling was a real person or a pseudonym.
That's typically two strikes against it in my book--I don't like not knowing the author, and I don't generally read novelizations.
But this is a somber, late-era spaghetti-flavored western novel that I think stands on its own merits. It is filled with complicated, flawed characters and has as melancholy a denouement you'll read. I'm glad I gave it a chance.
I got this in a "mystery bag" of books in a fundraiser from Horizon Books in Seattle, a place I had the pleasure to visit a few years ago.
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