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Carmody #5
The Killers
Wounded, and barely managing to stay one step ahead of a posse, Carmody came up with the perfect cover – acting sheriff of Salter City, a quiet little town in the middle of nowhere. But things didn’t stay quiet for very long. A green-eyed blonde named Sally had run away from her kill-crazy husband, one-time Civil War raider Sam Thornton, and straight into the arms of the notorious Eldredge clan, the meanest bunch of sheriff-hating wool hats who ever shot a man in the back. Caught between these two factions was a dangerous place to be … as Carmody quickly found out!Peter "A terrific, fluent, natural writer of action, and a solid researcher for his westerns and mysteries. He was a real workhorse and without question the very best writer that Leisure was publishing at the time."Check us out at www.piccadillypublishing.org
154 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1971
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 23, 2022
Short and quick western tale. Carmody has no morals but he can get mad and that's basically what happens. His cousin Luke is a sheriff in a backwater town when Carmody rides in just wanting to get to Mexico to heal up while the law was after him. Luke thought it was a great ideal to get Carmody to be acting sheriff while he goes off to get his mail order bride. It was supposed to be easy but then a crazy man finds out his wife, who has ran off to her equally crazy clannish family, just happens to be close by. The town is basically in the middle of a war, with Carmody somehow the only authority around.
Recommended for a quick one sitting read. It never gets dull and is fairly straightforward with a fun characters especially Carmody and the head of the clannish family, old man Zach Eldredge.
Recommended for a quick one sitting read. It never gets dull and is fairly straightforward with a fun characters especially Carmody and the head of the clannish family, old man Zach Eldredge.
December 23, 2025
Carmody is a Clint Eastwood-esque anti-hero in the Wild West, but he always manages to somehow not be the biggest jerk in the series, occasionally doing something heroic. In this adventure, Carmody rides into a dead-end Texas town and finds his cousin is the sheriff. His cousin needs to scoot out for a marriage (suspicious...) and offers Carmody the job of watching over the crummy little town until he gets back. Carmody says no, gets offered cash, and says yes, because money really does make the world go around.
Soon, Carmody is trying to juggle a crooked politician fixing to start a war with a clan of country folk over a runaway wife, and said wife's ruthless husband, who will burn down the town and everyone in it to get his bride back. Carmody just wants to get paid and get out, but he ends up sticking around and, maybe on purpose, maybe by chance, sets out to save the ungrateful town from annihilation.
It's a pretty sluggish pace, despite the short length. A lot of tough talk fills the chapters, but very little action until the end, when the violence explodes and the fun really begins. And then quickly ends.
None of the characters are especially interesting or likable. The old patriarch of the family has some personality and I got a chuckle over how he only agreed to help because he was offered a really big gun, but everyone else just fills a role with the bare minimum to earn a first name.
This has all the trappings of a B-Western in book form. Low budget, with only one setpiece, and a lot of sitting around and chatting about what might happen if a plot ever got in the way. It won't be for everyone, but I do have a soft spot for those sort of westerns and this read easily enough. If you dig short, pulp westerns and have a little patience for the real good stuff to happen, The Killers isn't a bad way to pass a bit of time.
Soon, Carmody is trying to juggle a crooked politician fixing to start a war with a clan of country folk over a runaway wife, and said wife's ruthless husband, who will burn down the town and everyone in it to get his bride back. Carmody just wants to get paid and get out, but he ends up sticking around and, maybe on purpose, maybe by chance, sets out to save the ungrateful town from annihilation.
It's a pretty sluggish pace, despite the short length. A lot of tough talk fills the chapters, but very little action until the end, when the violence explodes and the fun really begins. And then quickly ends.
None of the characters are especially interesting or likable. The old patriarch of the family has some personality and I got a chuckle over how he only agreed to help because he was offered a really big gun, but everyone else just fills a role with the bare minimum to earn a first name.
This has all the trappings of a B-Western in book form. Low budget, with only one setpiece, and a lot of sitting around and chatting about what might happen if a plot ever got in the way. It won't be for everyone, but I do have a soft spot for those sort of westerns and this read easily enough. If you dig short, pulp westerns and have a little patience for the real good stuff to happen, The Killers isn't a bad way to pass a bit of time.
January 3, 2023
I decided to come back to the Carmody series because I wanted to read a western novel in the first person point of view, and I really like what I read from Peter McCurtin so far. I like this second entry in the series better than I did the first, the hard-boil/private eye style of the writing was better handle on this one I believe. The story is very good and the climax was up to all the build-up. Peter McCurtin's writing style is very terse and straitghtforward and it's one that suits my taste to a tee. I will gladly continue reading the Carmody books because they offer a different style of western storytelling and I encouraged everybody to do so.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews