Owlhoot — J.T. Edson

At first most people, even the majority of his victims, regarded the Owlhoot as something of a joke. Armed with a long-barreled Colt Peacemaker, masked by a bandana and dressed like an old West cowhand, he robbed couples necking in cars on lonely roads. Woman Deputy Alice Fayde and her partner, modern-day gun wizard Deputy Bradford Counter, did not think he was a joke. Especially as they stood looking at the two bodies sprawled by the Pontiac convertible. They had been shot at close range by the .45 caliber, black powder-powered bullets from the Owlhoot's revolver. The deputies' fears had been realised. No longer was the Owlhoot a joke. Now he was a killer who had to be located and arrested before he used the Colt again.

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.