Winter Moon

by Lauran Paine

Five days ago, the blowing up of the express office safe in Burnt Timbers, Montana, had gone off without a hitch for the four members of the Buck Streeter gang, netting them $28,000. Since then, they have taken refuge in an abandoned shack on a plateau above the town of Brigham in northern Wyoming. With its bank and express office across the street from each other and lacking any telegraph for communication, Brigham seems like the perfect place to stage their next robbery before laying low for a while.

Genres: Westerns

500 pages, Library Binding

Published April 1, 2018

About the author

aka John Armour, Reg Batchelor, Kenneth Bedford, Frank Bosworth, Mark Carrel, Claude Cassady, Richard Clarke, Richard Dana, J F Drexler, Troy Howard, Jared Ingersol, John Kilgore, Hunter Liggett, J K Lucas, John Morgan (many more).

Lauran Bosworth Paine (born February 25, 1916 in Duluth, Minnesota – 2003 in California) was an American writer of Western fiction. Paine wrote over 900 books, including hundreds of Westerns as well as romance, science fiction, and mystery novels. He also wrote a number of non-fiction books on the Old West, military history, witchcraft, and other subjects.

His apprenticeship as a Western writer came about through the years he spent in the livestock trade, rodeos, and even motion pictures where he served as an extra because of his expert horsemanship.

Reviews

[Joyce · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do enjoy a good western, and Grover Gardner is a fabulous reader--his voice and cadence are just right for that underlying melancholy that characterizes this story. (4 stars for the narration). There's more character in this story than one might expect, as the focus is a member of an outlaw gang, but he's suffering from TB, dying really, and regretting his life choices (he's the one who can open or blow any safe). Especially when he meets a widow and her young son in the little Wyoming town where he'll rob his last safe. There's a US Marshall on the trail of the gang, of course, and the gang's plan to do one more job goes awry. Sense of place and the dangers of the terrain and weather equal the dangers from men; characters a little beyond the typical, leisurely pace without the frantic action of some Westerns, wonderfully evoked mood.

[Cheryle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Five days ago, the blowing up of the express office safe in Burnt Timbers, Montana, had gone off without a hitch for the four members of the Buck Streeter gang, netting them $28,000. Since then, they have taken refuge in an abandoned shack on a plateau above the town of Brigham in northern Wyoming. With its bank and express office across the street from each other and lacking any telegraph for communication, Brigham seems like the perfect place to stage their next robbery before laying low for a while.

[Mark Linney]

Decent read