The Floating Outfit 46

When the gunplay started the five Texans were in there, fighting to a man. And when the gunsmoke cleared, they were the ones still on their feet, If you were lucky enough to be their friend you were a friend for life. If, though, you made yourself their enemy, you might as well start digging your own grave. Because if you called down one of them, you called down all five.

That was the way things were with the legendary Floating Outfit.

J. T. Edson was a former British Army dog-handler who wrote more than 130 Western novels, accounting for some 27 million sales in paperback. Edson’s works - produced on a word processor in an Edwardian semi at Melton Mowbray - contain clear, crisp action in the traditions of B-movies and Western television series. What they lack in psychological depth is made up for by at least twelve good fights per volume. Each portrays a vivid, idealized “West That Never Was”, at a pace that rarely slackens.