Dead Men's Trails

Canyon O'Grady #1

by Jon Sharpe

176 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published July 1, 1989

Reviews

[Josh Hitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fast paced, well done adult western novel. O'Grady is a likeable main character who is a government agent working directly for the President in the middle of the 19th century. He is tasked to look into who killed the great explorer Merriwether Lewis decades ago and what happened to a half million in gold that was stolen during the paying of the Louisiana purchase. To do this he only has a list of names of men who were suspected to have been in on the robbery. One problem is someone seems to be killing them, five of the seven are already dead.

Highly recommended for fans of adult westerns. Has a solid ending that I wasn't really expecting, at least the tone it ended on.

[Matt Kight · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was pretty okay IMO. Based on some positive reviews I've heard about this series I picked up 5 different Canyon O'Grady books (for pretty cheap) at a used book store a while back and finally got around to reading #1. It wasn't as great as I hoped and I felt about the same for Trailsman #1 by the same author. This would lead me to believe that I'm just not really into Jon Messmann but then again I did enjoy The Moneta Papers and I know that Mr. Messmann is pretty beloved and respected among fans of these old pulps and men's adventure books so I'm sure I'll read another one eventually.