BULL'S EYE STAGE COACH

BULL’S EYE STAGE COACH

By Billy Hall

Robert Hale, March 2013

Marshal Dwight Stern and his posse are overseeing the loading of a shipment of gold onto a heavily armoured stage coach when they are ambushed in a surprise attack.

With Stern’s fiancée held in the grip of one of the attackers and a double-barrelled shotgun pointing at her head, there’s no time to play nice. With his hand on his gun and a prayer for the gunman to make a mistake and move the gun from Belinda’s head, all he needs is a split second….

The story starts some time before the incident the blurb outlines. We witness Stern laying the law down in his town and also share his concerns about a number of strangers who are arriving and looking for jobs, especially when one of the tries to befriend Belinda. Then there’s another stranger who implies he’s on Stern’s side, but in what, and can he be trusted?

It isn’t long before the robbery takes place and the outlaws get away with the gold and take Belinda with them. Stern races to save her but will he get to her before she’s ravished and killed? 

Billy Hall was the name Billy Hallsted used for his Black Horse Westerns. He had 39 published before he passed in May 2015. I read quite a few of his books and have always enjoyed them. Bull’s Eye Stage Coach proved to be another entertaining read.

Hallsted paced the story beautifully, moving from one tense scene to another making for some suspenseful reading. There’s plenty of gunplay in this tale too. The stranger who says he’s there to help Stern allowed the author to add some mysterious intrigue into the plot. All this combines to make this a difficult book to put down before I discovered how it all played out.

Luckily for me, I have a few more BHWs by Billy Hall in my collection that I’ve yet to read. On the strength of this one, I’m sure it won’t be too long before I pick up another.

American readers can get a copy here.

British readers can get a copy here.