[Joe Blade 01] • Blade 1

BLADE—tough, tender and temperamental. Slow to anger, fast with a gun and no slouch with women. A man tempered by the West, dangerous living and a perpetual gamble with death.

THE WOMEN—the Indian girl: lovely waif of a grisly massacre. The Mexican girl: mettlesome as a thoroughbred filly and heiress to half New Mexico. Both of them more desirable than the women of men’s dreams.

THE KILLERS—drawn to gold like steel to a magnet, blind to mercy, indifferent to death, they plundered the living and the dead. The scourge of the West.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Matt Chisholm is otherwise known as Peter Christopher Watts. Born in London, England in 1919 and died on Nov. 30, 1983. He was educated in art schools in England, then served with the British Amy in Burma from 1940 to 1946.

Watts first become a Civil Servant before he co-founded the Electro Acupuncture Voluntary Society of Britain and Ireland. It was here that he began to write for two official magazines although he soon branched into fiction.

Peter Watts, the author of more than 150 novels, is better known by his pen names of "Matt Chisholm" and "Cy James". He published his first western novel under the Matt Chisholm name in 1958 (Halfbreed). He began writing the "McAllister" series in 1963 with The Hard Men, and that series ran to 35 novels. He followed that up with the "Storm" series. And used the Cy James name for his "Spur" series.

Under his own name, Peter wrote Out of Yesterday, The Long Night Through, and Scream and Shout. He wrote both fiction and nonfiction books, including the very useful nonfiction reference work, A Dictionary of the Old West.