Stringer


Stringer

A Western set in the early years of the twentieth century, so there was some interesting use of the telephone, with rural ‘party lines’ for communication.

‘Stringer’ McKail travels from San Francisco- where he’s one of those too-honest-to-be-rich-and-famous newspaper reporters- to Calaveras County, where he grew up. Not long after arriving, people are trying to kill him. Soon after that, he meets the first of a string of women who want to sleep with him.

It’s all got something to do with a stagecoach robbery fifty years earlier, and a bandito who most likely never existed- his name translates from Mexican Spanish as ‘Grumpy Joe’, and may have been a catch all to keep the ‘Anglos’ from persecuting the local Mexican community. Somebody thinks they can track down the treasure, and they’re not above killing and kidnapping to get to it.

From:: Ian Pattinson Goodreads reviews