Savage Guns

Cotton Pickens #3

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Spoiled, brash King Bragg is going to hang for the murder of three men in a barroom.

In a town full of fools and sinners, of men bad and downright evil, a gallows is going up and time is running out. And a young, skinny undereducated lawman named Cotton Pickens is standing up to a savage storm--with only one gun on his side...

Genres: Westerns, Fiction

327 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

William W. Johnstone is the #1 bestselling Western writer in America and the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of hundreds of books, with over 50 million copies sold. Born in southern Missouri, he was raised with strong moral and family values by his minister father, and tutored by his schoolteacher mother. He left school at fifteen to work in a carnival and then as a deputy sheriff before serving in the army. He went on to become known as "the Greatest Western writer of the 21st Century." Visit him online at WilliamJohnstone.net.

Reviews

[Jeff Tankersley · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sheriff Cotton Pickens (yuck yuck) has the young King Bragg in his Doubtful, Wyoming jail, awaiting a hanging for the murder of three ranch hands killed in a saloon gunfight. King is maintaining his innocence; he was too drunk to shoot those guys but also too drunk to remember who did. Bragg's father is an area heavyweight with 20-something gunmen on his payroll and he orders Pickens to prove his son's innocence.

Pickens is kind of a slow-witted yahoo of lesser means and he doesn't like how the murder tale has a strange feel to it. As he starts to pick around the details of the case again, he slowly (very slowly) discovers some facts about the incident and people in the saloon who were working for a piece of garbage rancher. He wonders if this kid King might actually be innocent and is now holding off two rival ranches while trying to figure out what happened that night in that saloon.

Verdict: "Savage Guns" (2010) is mostly a boring western mystery, told in Johnstone's more crass and silly vision of the west, with a goofball protagonist in Sheriff Cotton Pickens. Repeated storylines, repeated interviews with hookers and the prisoner, repeated updates delivered to a judge that are repeatedly dismissed, and a running series of dirty jokes that Cotton doesn't understand get old quick. Then we get the standard Johnstone disconnected pivot from that comedic goof mystery to a ridiculous horror tale when the spoiler-removed finale comes and it is just awful.

Jeff's Rating: 1 / 5 (Bad)
movie rating if made into a movie: R

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fairly authentic though, personally, I don't much care for an "accent" in a book. Funny-sounding names for people and cities.

Book opens up with the sheriff sitting on a "two-holer" (yep, the john) and wiping with a Monkey Ward catalog--and even describes which pages he reads (women's undies) and which he uses to clean up . . . Then a bullet flies over his head and a posse is waiting to kidnap him right outside.

Good stuff.

[Barry Gardner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t enjoy a constant narrative about problems that people have on a seemingly day to day basis. I think that this has been the most crude writing that Johnstone has written. Nothing that keeps you wanting to read more.

[Teressa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a good western and mystery

[Jeff J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

#3 in the Cotton Pickens western series.

[Kurt Weber · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm starting to get mighty tired of how stupid Cotten Pickens is.

[Randy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sheriff Cotton Pickens has a lot of trouble in his town of Doubtful, Wyoming. Young King Bragg is scheduled to be hanged for the murder of three men.

The boy's father has promised if his innocent boy is hanged, the Sheriff will be right behind him.

Also, the boss of the three dead men, Crayfish Ruble, has promised that the boy will be hanged, either legally or illegally.

Both sides have an army of gun slicks backing them.

Pickens, in his investigation, comes to believe the boy is innocent, despite the trial and witnesses to the contrary. The old judge is a hard head. Without evidence, the hanging will go off as scheduled.

As the day comes closer, tension mounts in the town and Pickens wonders if he can find the evidence needed. Or will an innocent young man die, sure to spark a spate of violence in the little town.

[Mickey Gregory · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crude start, ended up being a good read