A New Comanche Hero

Johnny D. Boggs continues to give us some of the best Westerns of his career. He hits the readers’ interest dead center with two fast-paced, but emotionally-compelling stories centered in a land rarely visited by the usual Western, the Indian Territory’s reservations. Daniel Killstraight is the unusual young hero caught between two worlds when he arrives back on the reservation after seven years spent in an Eastern school that aimed to blot out his Comanche heritage and drill in the ways of the whites.

Killstraight (Leisure Books, $8.99): After witnessing Comanche Jimmy Comes Last’s execution for murder, Killstraight vows to prove him innocent. He joins the Indian Territory police and, while guarding prisoners to a nearby fort or White Eye’s jail, he follows his own paper trail. Surviving dry gulches and other near misses, Killstraight comes nearer and nearer to the answer. Who’s behind something bigger than pure murder?

Whiskey Kills: A Killstraight Story (Five Star, $25.95): One after another, both old and very young Comanches are dying from what’s in those Ginger Beer bottles, and Killstraight has to find out where they come from before both innocent and guilty perish of alcoholic poisoning.  The fact that they are manufactured by a Texas bottling works gives Killstraight a very narrow lead. But if he leaves the reservation to trail the deadly bottles below the border, he’s without any authority.  Those behind the illegal liquor know this—and know how to stop him permanently.

(Editor’s note: Boggs is a contributing editor to True West.)