Jerusalem Camp

by Cameron Judd

Tellico, a mysterious stranger the people of Jerusalem Camp believe is connected with a series of murders, and Marshal Jared Cable, the only one who believes he's innocent, search for the real killer before winter storms isolate the town until spring

Genres: Westerns

221 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Cameron Judd (AKA: Tobias Cole) is a bestselling author of over forty historical and Western novels, including The Canebrake Men and Crockett of Tennessee. A former award-winning journalist, he continues to write his acclaimed column “Clips to Keep” and lives with his family in Greene County, Tennessee.

Reviews

[Jeff Tankersley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dual protagonists are trying to save a small town that is plagued by a violent killer. Tellico is a drifter who comes across the small mining town of "Jerusalem Camp" (1989) in the Sierra mountains during a terrible winter snowstorm. Jerusalem Camp's reluctant Sheriff Cable finds himself investigating some brutal murders around town that put the whole lot of them on edge and the town's elders may have some history that explains why these murders are taking place.

Verdict: A good, short, horror-slash-western tale, "Jerusalem Camp" has kind of a locked room murder mystery feel to it because this small town and its suspected killers, victims, and lawmen are trapped in a snowbound mountain setting.

Jeff's Rating: 3 / 5 (Good)
movie rating if made into a movie: PG-13

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jerusalem Camp gets most of the old west details right. A harsh wilderness experience, distrust of strangers, blood and violence, and most important for a western author, he knows his firearms.

Jerusalem Camp is a small mining camp that never became the big lawless boomtown that others did. Founded by a religious group, for many years the saloons and brothels stayed away. Eventually, though, a few found their way into the Camp.

As the novel opens, a stranger named Tellico is on the run, his mysterious opponents chasing him to the point of exhaustion when they stumble onto Jerusalem Camp. At first, Tellico is captured and in danger of being lynched for a recent murder, but it isn't long until another murder occurs while he is in custody and his innocence is clear. He joins forces with the local law to help find the killer.

At this point, the novel steers away from being a simple western and becomes a thriller, with a mysterious stranger stalking the residents of a snowbound town, killing people and for some mysterious he is hacking off his victim's thumbs. Eventually we discover that there is a reason for these crimes and the town has a dark secret, or at least some of the residents do. To complicate matters, the man chasing Tellico just won't give up and we finally find out what that is all about.

So we have a decent western-themed thriller. There also is a sense of religious idealism that flows through this novel, which is written in a very clean style, without being preachy... the concept of all men being sinners is clearly presented and the author does so while advancing the story, and apparently, his faith, to the reader.

FLAWS:

1) There is a coincidental factor that is fairly annoying that plays a part in the conclusion. In my opinion, if the author had left out that element the thriller would have been much better.

2) Western authors need to remember that liquor was used as anesthetic and not antiseptic in the old west. Whiskey was homemade and often had ingredients like tobacco plugs for color, or even rattlesnake heads. The concept of germs was not advanced in western medicines, which is way so many people died more of infections than gunshot wounds. A smart doctor would have washed a wound with water, but the antiseptic qualities of alcohol were not well known.