A GOOD DAY FOR A MASSACRE

 

SLASH AND PECOS
Book 2 of 6
A GOOD DAY FOR A MASSACRE
By William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone
Pinnacle Books, July 2020

Life on the straight and narrow is easier said than done for a pair of crooks like Jimmy “Slash” Braddock and Melvin “Pecos Kid” Baker. But these reprobates are doing their damnedest to make an honest go of it. They’ve managed to safely deliver a church organ to a mountain parish when their sometime employer – Chief U.S. Marshal Luther T. “Bleed-‘m-So” Bledsoe – recruits them for a job only fools would take.

Marshal Bledsoe wants them to pick up a shipment of gold in the mining town in the Sawatch Mountains. Here’s the catch: Slash and Pecos’s wagon is just a decoy. When a ruthless gang ambushes the real gold shipment, it’s up to Slash and Pecos to go after the trigger-happy bandits. And they won’t be alone. A lady Pinkerton, Hattie Friendly – who is anything but – survived the ambush and is hellbent on getting the gold back. Even if she has to team up with a pair of ornery old cutthroats like Slash and Pecos….

The author has come up with a very engaging pair of lead characters in Slash and Pecos. They’re tough, they bicker and can get into all kinds of trouble without trying. Their outlaw days are over and they’ve been granted an amnesty, trouble is not many people know about this. Teaming them up with Hattie makes for some lively exchanges of dialogue which often had me laughing out loud.

The story is fast paced and action packed. The body count is high. As well as knives, pistols and rifles, Gatling guns are used to devasting effect. Slash and Pecos get thrown in jail too by a lawman who doesn’t know they are free men now. As well as Hattie, there are other strong roles for female characters. Slash is looking to pop-the-question to one of them….if he can conquer his nerves. Trouble is he might just have a love rival.

Having only read two of the books in this series, Slash and Pecos have already made a strong impact on me and have become two of my favourite characters to come from the Johnstone’s. 

American readers can get a copy here.

UK readers can get a copy here.

CUTTHROATS

SLASH AND PECOS

Number 1 of 5 to date

By William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone

Kensington hardback, February 2019

Pinnacle paperback, July 2019

Not every Western hero wears a white hat or a tin star. Most of them are just fighting to survive. Some of them can be liars, cheaters, and thieves. And then there’s a couple of old-time robbers named Slash and Pecos . . . 

After a lifetime of robbing banks and holding up trains, Jimmy “Slash” Braddock and Melvin “Pecos Kid” Baker are ready to call it quits – though not completely by choice. Sold out by their gang, Slash and Pecos have to bust out of jail and pull one last job to finance their early retirement . . . 

The target is a rancher’s payroll train. Catch is: the train is carrying a Gatling gun manned by deputy U.S. marshals who know they’re coming. Caught and quickly sentenced to hang, their old enemy – the wheelchair-bound, bucket of mean, Marshal L.C. Bledsoe – shows up at the last minute to spare their lives. For a price. He’ll let them live if they hunt down their own gang, the Snake River Marauders. And kill those prairie rats – with extreme prejudice . . . 

Slash and Pecos are a couple of bickering old outlaws who’ve never killed anyone unless it was whilst defending themselves. Both are very likeable characters whose reflections on their past and observations on their now and future often had me grinning or laughing out loud. I will quickly add that this isn’t a comedy western, far from it.

After a lengthy gunfight with bounty hunters the story swiftly moves on to the ill-fated train robbery. This leads to them being sentenced to death by hanging. Saved in the nick-of-time, Slash and Pecos now have to face up to the realization that they have been double-crossed and have no choice but to track down and kill their old gang. Fittingly the final showdown revolves around another train robbery which contains many edge-of-the-seat moments.

There are many other terrific characters in this book too; Marshal “Bleed-‘Em-So” Bledsoe and the beautiful statuesque blonde, Abigail Langdon, who pushes the Marshal around in his wheelchair. Then there’s Jaycee Breckenridge, a long-time friend who it seems set them up to be captured, which is a revelation that Slash and Pecos struggle to comprehend. 

Descriptions of characters, landscape, architecture, trains and the many action scenes are superb, painting vivid imagery that played out in my minds-eye in a very visual, gripping tale that made this book difficult to put down. On reaching the end, I was left wanting to read the next book in the series as soon as possible.