Tracker #1

THE WINNING HAND

as by Tom Cutter

Avon, July 1983

It took a hard-drinking, high-rolling poker game to make Tracker the owner of one of the fanciest hotels in San Francisco. With his buddy Duke Farrell, one of the West’s slickest con men, Tracker took off to see his new merchandise.

Tracker barely had time to get used to San Francisco’s city ways before he was caught up in a boxing match, a couple of gunfights, too many fistfights, and more pretty women than even he could keep track of.

But then, Tracker was always good with his hands.

This book has a central theme that doesn’t appear in western books that often; a boxing match. The man Tracker finds himself training, Will Sullivan, is a character every bit as engaging as Tracker himself.

When we first meet Tracker he’s a man with a mysterious past, although the author – Robert Randisi writing as Tom Cutter – slowly reveals just what has made Tracker the man he is.

There are also plenty of beautiful women and as soon as Tracker meets one of them it soon becomes obvious he’s going to end up in bed with her. This leads to some interesting situations as jealousy adds complications, even though Tracker makes it plain he’s not interested in any of them other than for sex.

As well as the boxing match there’s a sub-plot of a series of “accidents” happening to the hotel, and Tracker has to solve the reason behind them. And he also has to decide whether to keep the hotel or not.

So there’s plenty to pull the reader into the story, which moves forward at a rapid pace to it’s action packed finale that left me looking forward to reading the next in the series.