By Chet Cunningham
Hale, February 2012
David West is a fugitive on the run. As an innocent man he
leaves Boston and heads for Junction Springs, Colorado.
In Junction Springs a one-woman detective agency needs help
to discover the identity of her father’s killer, and West is just the man for
the job. After several shoot-outs, a kidnapping, and a high land-swindle
scheme, the killer is nailed and brought to trial.
With his new expertise, West returns to Boston to seek
justice and find the man who killed his fiancée. Can West avenge her death and
once more find love?
Chet Cunningham is a name that should be familiar to many
western readers as he has written well over a hundred westerns for American
publishers. Fugitive Run is his third Black Horse Western, the first, Survival
Trail appeared in July 1995 and his second, Wade’s War, much more recently,
hitting the shelves in September 2010. The book also has much smaller print
than the majority of BHWs.
Helping Susan Kramer find her father’s killer gives David
West an education in how to solve a murder, teaches him how to think and work
like a detective. With the book being set towards the close of the 1800s Chet
Cunningham is able to include ground-breaking crime solving techniques such as
fingerprinting – this is mainly mentioned as background to the story but makes
for fascinating reading. Another invention that proves indispensable when West
returns to Boston is the telephone. Of course fists and six-guns have their
uses too, in fact the book begins with a traditional ambush and shoot-out and
later the use of a pistol provides one of the highlights of the story when West
is called out to draw against a man called Hondo.
Filled with great characters and a fast moving plot this
book was a joy to read, and I hope it isn’t too long before another BHW appears
from Chet Cunningham.
Fugitive Run is officially released on February 29th
but is available now from the usual Internet bookstores.
1 comment:
YAY! Thanks so much for reviewing Westerns - so often they are overlooked. Chet Cunningham is my dad, and I'm VERY proud of him as you might imagine!
Thanks so much.
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