Ride for Rule Cordell

by Cotton Smith

Texas Ranger John Checker teams up with former outlaw Rule Cordell to fight a powerful ranch owner and her band of thugs as they try to do away with the Rangers and take control of the state.

Genres: Westerns

334 pages, Paperback

First published March 30, 2010

About the author

Cotton Smith was born in Kansas City, Missouri; some would say a century later than he should have. He grew up enjoying both adjoining states, Kansas and Missouri, living mostly in Kansas. His ancestors fought in the Civil War, mostly for the South, as regulars and guerillas. As a young man, he learned to ride horses from a grizzled wrangler he remembers fondly. He also learned how to roll a cigarette then, too! "Looking back on it, he taught me the right ways around a horse -- and he taught me some other things too. Like swinging into the saddle with the horse loping. And springing up from the rear, like the movie stars did. Never occurred to me then that I could get hurt. Guess no young person ever does."

Early in life, he was also exposed to the ways of the Plains Indian, to their sacred ceremonies, customs and traditions. His appreciation for their spiritual connection to the land and all that occupied it was heightened by involvement with Indian friends and backed by extensive research. Both touched him deeply and can be readily seen in his caring -- and accurate--portrayal of Indians in his novels. Throughout his stories, one finds intriguing glimpses of this insight, giving readers a sense of what really was and why.

Reviews

[Steve Lacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ride for Rule Cordell

Once again, Cotton Smith wrote a real page-turner. I love that the characters beloved from other books met up with each other in this excellent novel!

[Jeff Tankersley · Rating 1 out of 5]

Two Texas Rangers receive a call for help from a rancher friend who says a local gang is trying to push him off his land and that things are getting rough. At the novel's start, the protagonist Ranger John Checker is approaching the ranch house and knows the family is being held captive by a number of bad guys trying to force the owner into selling his ranch and Checker takes matters into his own hands.

An evil English-born landowner named Lady Holt pretty much rules the place with her wiles and her girl parts and she pays the corrupt governor of the state to fire all the Texas Rangers, buys off the local sheriff and judge, sets up the Rangers with a phony murder charge, chats out loud with her dead sister's ghost, and hires gunmen to kill the heroes. Once the Rangers meet a legendary former outlaw-now-preacher named Rule Cordell there are a lot of back story discussions about what happened in other Rule Cordell books that don't impact this plot.

That's a strange thing here, or at least one that had me confused as heck, "Ride for Rule Cordell" (2010) is not advertised on the back cover or on Goodreads as one of a series of books. I didn't know there were any other books with the Cordell character until I got a bit through this one and I still don't know if there is a sequence to them or not. It isn't usually a problem but in this book there are so many references to off-screen action that I thought I was missing something, and because I wasn't interested in reading these extended recaps of other books I'd try skimming ahead but then worry I was jumping past something important.

The action sequences aren't paced well, the characters are stereotypical and silly (an assassin travels not on a horse but in a carriage with a cat), there's a fat French bad guy who says "zee" for "the" and "vous" for "you" and "sacre blue" in a lot of really bad dialogue sequences, and a lot of cowardly losers wet themselves. This is one of those kinds of westerns.

Verdict: A disjointed, bad Saturday western with token characters and a boring plot, not really worth a read.

Jeff's Rating: 1 / 5 (Bad)
movie rating if made into a movie: PG-13

[Charles W Black · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic read!

A fast moving western that you cannot put down once you have read a few chapters. The good guys win as it should be.

[D. E. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Texas Ranger Western

CD has penned a western about the events leading up to the State Texas Rangers being disbanded and the Texas Rangers being formed. This novel begins with two different sets of rangers having authority to make arrests. This is not a problem until politics begins to corrupt the State Texas Rangers. I his is an excellent read for the genre.....ER

[Keith D Hauber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Repatriation

Another good story written by Cotton Smith. If you are a western fan the continuing saga written by this author.