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Dakota
Warpath
Three 10 one ... The roundhouse right was meant for Dakota's jaw. It never landed. Instead the odds dropped to two to one. A screaming man retreated, holding a dislocated shoulder. The other two moved in, to either side of Dakota. Suddenly one man leaped at Dakota. As Dakota turned, he stumbled, and the second man had him by the throat in the classic mugger's hold. The third man cocked his fist, taking his time for a haymaker. Two quick moves by Dakota canceled everything ... then an explosion of grunts and flesh hitting flesh. One man hit the pavement, his head making an ugly thump. Dakota went into the last man, chopping vicious lefts into his face. He moved the migi shizentai position. He was feeling the rhythm now, like a cat. Then man closed in, swinging. Dakota dumped Ippan seionage. One running, two down. The odds were even. Even for an Indian.
183 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
10 people want to read
About the author
Gilbert Ralston
18 books1 followerGilbert Alexander Ralston was a journalist, author, and television writer.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 25, 2025
Not your average pinnacle book of the 70's. Unlike "The Executioner." "The Destroyer." Or "The Penetrator." Those books were great action, shoot 'em ups and revenge. This is more like a noir book from the golden area. Don't get me wrong, there is really no comparison to Chandler or Hammett, but this goes along those lines. That's a good thing, for me.
A native American of dual lineage works as a private eye and when a friend is blown up by a car bomb, he looks into it. The trail leads to a small town where a man owns almost everything he sees. The clues twist and turn Dakota every which way as he tries to solve it.
A native American of dual lineage works as a private eye and when a friend is blown up by a car bomb, he looks into it. The trail leads to a small town where a man owns almost everything he sees. The clues twist and turn Dakota every which way as he tries to solve it.
January 8, 2025
Dakota is a PI working out of a small town in Nevada. He has a Vietnam background that is clumsily explained in exposition. His friend is killed by a car bomb after he introduces a mystery client. Dakota signs on to the investigation on who the murderer is, and that leads to a small town basically ran by corrupt people at every level. He has his hands full as he blunders around. The only good thing is that the people he is after are even more inept.
Can't recommend, there are some good points but overall it just meanders with little going on til close to the end. Really, the main action scene is kind of silly as well.
Can't recommend, there are some good points but overall it just meanders with little going on til close to the end. Really, the main action scene is kind of silly as well.
September 15, 2022
DAKOTA, first published in 1973 and republished recently by Brash Books, seems to have been created to capitalize on a trend of Native Americans as crime-fiction heroes in modern-day Westerns, a trend that seems to have popularized by the "Billy Jack" films and helped along by series novels by Brian Garfield (short-lived) and Tony Hillerman (iconic and long-lived), among others.
That sounds more cynical than I intended, for DAKOTA is a sleek and sincere work of slick professionalism by a veteran writer of TV Westerns with a mildly revisionist bent (author Gilbert Ralston helped create "The Wild Wild West" series). But there's a reason the Dakota books — five in all between 1973 and 1975 — were published by Pinnacle, a purveyor of exploitative fare, and while this book is fast-paced, propulsive and never less than entertainingly twisty, it can be more than a little cringe-inducing as well for its sometimes facile pandering to white-guilt fantasies of the noble Native:
"He looked down at his clothes. They were filthy, torn. One of his sleeves was in shreds. Blood was oozing from the lacerated flesh of his knee. His hands were scraped and raw. His elbows. I am Indian as h*ll, he thought. I feel good."
And it can be more than a little plug-and-play schematic:
“Ex-Marine. Expert everything. His father’s a Piegan. Mother’s a Shoshoni. He speaks the languages. They used him and two of his brothers in Nam as talkers for an advance unit. They got surrounded. Dakota led the unit out. What was left of it. And him. They hung a medal on him and sent him home to get the shrapnel out.”
"So he’s tough. What makes him a good cop?”
"Four years as a one-man police department in a tank town in New York State, while he earned a Masters in Police Science and a B.A. in languages. He’s a very big head.”
(Equally schematic is the plot, which comes straight out of the Billy Jack files: A small town in the West is run by a courtly, wealthy monster who is used to bending the locals to his bidding. But when bodies start to pile up in the monster's bid to maintain his idea of order, a lone-wolf type rides in to restore the law. But it's a durable story trope for a reason, and its unapologetic unoriginality here, in the end, is neither feature nor bug.)
And the gender scufflings in DAKOTA are straight out of 1973, and the hardboiled oinkings of sexist pigs in the face of women's lib:
"Dakota smiled back mechanically. The incipient divorcee is an easy lay. He wondered why. Frustration, perhaps. Or the approach of freedom. Lilith surfacing in their bruised psyches. Something."
All that said, DAKOTA was fun on the surface, with some enjoyable hardboiled prose (“This town is full of trouble. Hanna can’t control it. This is a refreshment station for everything. Rustlers. Con men. Card workers. Hookers. Hopheads. Heist men. Hoods.”). All in all, I had the sense of reading an above-average novelization of an above-average 1973 TV movie. Ralston is a stone pro, and DAKOTA is a sturdy craft work cannily designed to meet a perceived growth market.
That sounds more cynical than I intended, for DAKOTA is a sleek and sincere work of slick professionalism by a veteran writer of TV Westerns with a mildly revisionist bent (author Gilbert Ralston helped create "The Wild Wild West" series). But there's a reason the Dakota books — five in all between 1973 and 1975 — were published by Pinnacle, a purveyor of exploitative fare, and while this book is fast-paced, propulsive and never less than entertainingly twisty, it can be more than a little cringe-inducing as well for its sometimes facile pandering to white-guilt fantasies of the noble Native:
"He looked down at his clothes. They were filthy, torn. One of his sleeves was in shreds. Blood was oozing from the lacerated flesh of his knee. His hands were scraped and raw. His elbows. I am Indian as h*ll, he thought. I feel good."
And it can be more than a little plug-and-play schematic:
“Ex-Marine. Expert everything. His father’s a Piegan. Mother’s a Shoshoni. He speaks the languages. They used him and two of his brothers in Nam as talkers for an advance unit. They got surrounded. Dakota led the unit out. What was left of it. And him. They hung a medal on him and sent him home to get the shrapnel out.”
"So he’s tough. What makes him a good cop?”
"Four years as a one-man police department in a tank town in New York State, while he earned a Masters in Police Science and a B.A. in languages. He’s a very big head.”
(Equally schematic is the plot, which comes straight out of the Billy Jack files: A small town in the West is run by a courtly, wealthy monster who is used to bending the locals to his bidding. But when bodies start to pile up in the monster's bid to maintain his idea of order, a lone-wolf type rides in to restore the law. But it's a durable story trope for a reason, and its unapologetic unoriginality here, in the end, is neither feature nor bug.)
And the gender scufflings in DAKOTA are straight out of 1973, and the hardboiled oinkings of sexist pigs in the face of women's lib:
"Dakota smiled back mechanically. The incipient divorcee is an easy lay. He wondered why. Frustration, perhaps. Or the approach of freedom. Lilith surfacing in their bruised psyches. Something."
All that said, DAKOTA was fun on the surface, with some enjoyable hardboiled prose (“This town is full of trouble. Hanna can’t control it. This is a refreshment station for everything. Rustlers. Con men. Card workers. Hookers. Hopheads. Heist men. Hoods.”). All in all, I had the sense of reading an above-average novelization of an above-average 1973 TV movie. Ralston is a stone pro, and DAKOTA is a sturdy craft work cannily designed to meet a perceived growth market.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews