Mean as Hell

by Dee Harkey

Autobiographical story of Sheriff Dee Harkey. The old photo on the back cover is of 4 hanged members of the Miller gang which Harkey helped arrest when he was only 15 years old.

Genres: Nonfiction

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1948

Reviews

[Beverly Reed]

Great. Make a movie

[Vincent Wood]

This is the autobiography is a lawman protecting West Texas and New Mexico during the days of the Wild West. Many people attempted to kill him during his time, yet he lived to an old age. He was in his 80's at the time of the writing of this book.

I have a rule that I do not give a star rating for books written before the 20th century. With this book, I think I am going to expand that rule to books that I might have a particular bias towards. The reason I think I might have a bias towards this book is the fact that multiple of my ancestors are mentioned within it. One of the first people the author worked for happens to be my great-great-great grandfather, although the author looks to have put an extra "s" in the last name, a common misspelling that I have seen people do with my own last name. Furthermore, the person who happened to successfully shoot the author happens to be a great-great grandmother of mine while she is protecting her father.

Even without my potential bias towards wanting to give this book a high rating, I do think this is a fascinating book. It gives us a feel as to how the old west was and the difficulty in upholding the law. The author has run-ins with multiple historically infamous people including Jim Miller, Pat Garrett and members of the Dalton Gang. I admit I often checked out what the glorious Internet had to say about various people and various events as I came across them in the book.

The author seems to be a person I would have loved to have met in real life had I had the chance. I truly enjoyed this book.

[Avis Black]

Starts out promising, but becomes rather monotonous. The book could use some condensing.