Pony Express — John J. McLaglen

Jed Herne, riding the vengeance trail, is hunting down Charley Howell, a former galloper with the Pony Express �" the legendary mail service that had turned Jed from a callow boy into a man.
Charley Howell: liar, drunk, rapist, thief and violent murderer and Kid, a cold-eyed teenage killer, had raped and murdered a banker's daughter in Wyoming. The banker hired Herne the Hunter to get them both for her brutal and blood-soaked death.

John J. McLaglen is the pseudonym for the writing team of Laurence James and John Harvey.

Laurence James began his writing career in 1974 when he published his first novel in the science-fiction series SIMON RACK: EARTH LIES SLEEPING. He worked in publishing for ten years off and on till about 1970, when he went to “New English Library and ran the editorial side of NEL for three years.” In addition, around 1974, James published the fantasy saga of Hells Angels in England & Wales in the early 1990s under the name Mick Norman.

While the name of Laurence James is not synonymous with Westerns, those of John J. McLaglen, William M. James and James W. Marvin, to name but a few, are.

John Harvey, a former English and drama school teacher began his contribution to the Herne the Hunter series with the second book, River of Blood. “In the Western,” says John, “I'm interested in finding a balance between the myth of the West (as it comes through American literature and film) and the historical reality. Increasingly, I'm concerned to attempt to make a stronger place for women in the Western, which is traditionally a refuge of masculinity and male fantasy.”

The character of Jed Herne is like a blunt instrument moving through the West. He never achieves happiness, nor riches. Laurence James said, “There is no such thing as a happy western hero. Never. They can't be. They've got to be men alone. They've got to be heroes.”