The Ghost with Blue Eyes

Randisi's (Targett) short but intense western delivers exciting plot in spare, exacting prose. After the gunfighter known only as Lancaster turns down a $10,000 offer to kill a man (Lancaster provides protection but he's not a killer-for-hire), he is forced into a gunfight with his would-be target, with tragic results: Lancaster accidentally kills a six-year-old girl. Haunted by the memory of the girl's vivid blue eyes, Lancaster moves to another town, where he gives up the gun and becomes the town drunk. But fate steps in to change his life once again when he meets nine-year-old Alicia and her mother, who are on the run from Alicia's abusive father, rich and powerful Aaron Delaware. Alicia's mother is killed by one of Delaware's hired guns and Delaware arrives to claim his daughter, but Lancaster comes to the rescue and takes Alicia to the best person he can think of to care for her--the mother of the girl he killed. Readers will experience the pleasures found in old ""B"" Westerns: the simple (but not simplistic) moral opposition between good and evil and the inspiration of personal redemption. (Aug.)