Luke Sutton faces a tough job when he is hired by lawyer William Smythe to find three eyewitnesses to a murder. All of them – Dennis Rutledge, Hank Tully, and Etta Spode – have already testified that Jimmy Lee Cranston committed the killing. Jimmy swears he’s innocent, and it is up to Luke to save him by finding out what the witnesses really saw.
For a man like Luke, who makes his living tracking down people who don’t want to be found, finding a runaway husband, a slippery card shark, and a very popular dance hall girl should be no more than a few days’ work. The problem is keeping them alive after he finds them.
It seems someone else is just as interested in their whereabouts. Someone who’s determined that Rutledge, Tully and Spode stick to their original stories – right to the grave!
Lawman is the eighth book of a nine-book series. It’s certainly the first book I’ve read by Leo P. Kelley that I know of. This could easily be a stand-alone novel as there is very little mention of Sutton’s history and you certainly don’t need to have read any of the earlier books to enjoy this one.
The story starts with a scene that outlines the type of man Sutton is and features a lengthy fist-fight that lands Sutton the job of tracking down the three missing witnesses. Sutton is also given a lawman’s badge to make his hunt legal.
Sutton finds each of the three one by one, but the first two are killed before they can tell him the truth. Will the third live long enough to reveal what really happened and the identity of the real killer? The answers are kept secret until the final gunfight that includes a neat twist to the ending.
There was never any doubt that Sutton would find the witnesses and save Cranston from the hangman’s noose. Sutton solved everything with ease and never had much opposition in completing his mission. The book was a quick read that proved entertaining enough and someday I’ll probably read the other Sutton book I have.