Cards and Colts

When Miss Olga Chernyshevsky was shown how easy it was to make diamonds she demanded that she too should attempt the experiment—and accidently produced emeralds. The mistake meant she had to run for her life, straight into a poker game which resulted in the fight of a lifetime with the girlfriend of the notorious Arnaud ‘le Loup Garou’ Chavallier. And while Olga was jumping from one knife-edge predicament to another, Ole Devil Hardin’s floating outfit were trying to keep the peace in Mulrooney—against heavy odds. 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.