Slocum #8

NORTH TO DAKOTA

as by Jake Logan

Playboy, 1976

Godley came out of Chicago with a bankroll, twenty hired killers and a plan. He would find and bring back the greatest Wild West spectacle of all time - the bones of Crazy Horse. For pleasure he brought his beautiful blonde mistress. For insurance he hired Joe Kidd, a sadist with a sheriff’s star.

Jim Beckett came from Denver. Half black, half white, an adopted Indian Chief and famous mountain man, he was a hero rapidly slipping into insanity.

Slocum was the man in the middle, hired by Godley as a tracker, and no matter what the cost, he was determined to have the blonde and the bankroll – even if it meant being the only man left alive.

And interesting plot, written by Martin Smith as Jake Logan, that’s filled with double-cross and crazy characters. Smith comes up with many gruesome ways to kill off the men making up Godley’s party as Beckett attempts to stop them finding Crazy Horse’s grave.

For a series of books that are sold as adult westerns there is very little sex in the story, that which it does contain is over in a couple of paragraphs.

There are a couple of plot-lines that made me raise an eyebrow such as the timeline in regard to Slocum’s age and also the fact that they supposedly find Crazy Horse’s grave as I thought this has never happened, but remembering this is fiction rather than fact makes this easy to overlook and the story be enjoyed for what it is.

One of the better Slocum books I’ve read.