Book Review: Spur #30 Boise Belle by Dirk Fletcher
I’m not sure what this type of book is called in the marketing department, so I’m going to borrow a phrase from the pulps and call it “spicy Western.” This is a subgenre of the Western, usually in long-running paperback series, in which a tough Western hero fights outlaws and other baddies, pausing every few chapters for fairly explicit sex scenes. It’s plot with porn, rather than porn with plot.
And what is that plot, you ask? Spur McCoy is a Secret Service agent who has come to the Idaho Territory to investigate threats against the governor, who is running for re-election. He’s not sure if a rash of vigilante killings is related to this or not. Spur’s slightly distracted by the governor’s lusty and barely legal daughter, and a pretty widow (whose husband was killed by the vigilantes in a mistaken attack.) There’s also polygamous Mormons in the mix.
The local law enforcement has been lax in dealing with the vigilantes as they save the cost of a trial, but as Spur notes, once you let one bunch of people take the law into their own hands, other people want to get into the act. More killings indicate there’s a new vigilante in town, with a very different agenda.
This isn’t a mystery; the readers are let in on what’s going on well before Spur figures it out. Still, it’s a bit more complex plot than many of this subgenre have.
Sadly, the paperbacks are overpriced new; check garage sales and suchlike if you think this is the sort of thing you’d be interested in.
