Thursday 11 December 2008

Easy Company #24

EASY COMPANY AND THE COW COUNTRY QUEEN
as by John WesleyHoward
Jove, January 1983

Cattle king Pete Matthews sent his daughter and a herd of cows to build a new ranch. Trouble is she builds on land the Arapaho claim is theirs. If that isn't bad enough her men are using poisoned meat to kill off the local wolf population, and some of the Arapaho's animals start dying too. As the Indian's gather to wipe out the Cow Country Queen, Easy Company find themselves with the job of keeping the peace.

This is the 24th book in the series and it packs in all the characters you'd expect to find in an Easy Company adventure, along with an Indian uprising and evil whites. Author James Wyckoff – writing as John Wesley Howard – is therefore able to balance the more brutal side of the story with a few humourous moments featuring Malone, Wolfgang Holzer and other members of the mounted infantry that make up Easy Company.

It's as Easy Company try to track down and stop the "wolfers" using poisoned meat that it becomes evident that there's more behind the arrival of the Cow Country Queen than just building a new ranch, and it's this mystery element that will keep the reader hooked until the end.

This is a well written book, although with a fairly basic plot, that makes for a decent entry into the Easy Company series.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

on cover alone I'd be sold to grab this in my travels.

Steve M said...

In my opinion most of the Easy Company books are worth a read, there's 31 altogether.