Tincup Storm Country CL

No publisher of westerns would touch this novel, featuring themes of incest and threats to a child, when Patten wrote it in the mid-1950s. Finally available, the yarn measures up as less than the best from this prolific three-time winner of the Golden Spur Award. Blood revenge, jealousy and a range war between cattlemen and sheepmen enter into the narrative, which features an arsenal's worth of flaming pistols. The characters are saddleworn, though, and the plot, despite swift movement, is transparent. For all its mature themes--which are tame today--this is at heart a bullet-and-cliche-ridden dime novel filled with hard-eyed pistoleers and thin-lipped doxies all trying to turn a hero into a permanent has-been. (May)