+ 3 Edge meets Steele books + mini-series Edge: The Return, 6 books
The year is 1866. The region is the Arizona Territory. The town is called Rainbow.
The cavalry are there. So is an English gambler. So is Edge. Outside the town waits Cochise and his Apaches.
They are all together at Rainbow’s end.
This book has an extremely high death count as the Apache are determined to wipe the white man out. Farmsteads and ranches are swept aside. People are butchered horrifically. Edge arrives at one such farmstead and views the remains of the slain. Realizes one of the famers daughters has been taken prisoner but there is nothing he can do about it.
Arriving in the town of Rainbow, which is built by a Fort also called Rainbow, Edge meets the English gambler and is soon lured into a hunt for one million dollars that is buried somewhere in the vicinity. With hundreds of Apaches swarming the area, the money isn’t going to be easy to find. And then the Apaches attack the town.
George G. Gilman is still developing the character of Edge but all the main elements are to be found. He’s hard, very hard, and only believes in looking out for himself. He’s quick to act and give orders – which doesn’t go down well with the Fort’s commander. The gallows humour is there but not every chapter ends with a pun as it will in later books. The violence is extremely graphic and some of the torture scenes will make you cringe. Not many of the main, and support, characters will survive.
Apache Death was always one of my favourites in the Edge series, and after reading it again, it still remains so. The cover art has to be one of the greatest of the entire series.
George G. Gilman was a pseudonym used by Terry Harknett.
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