Halliday 4

Halliday 4

It was drought country. The land was little more than dust, the cattle slowly but surely dying on the hoof. For most of the ranchers in those parts, it had been a year-long disaster. But for local businessman Harp McPhee, it was a situation he aimed to exploit for all it was worth.

Knowing the drought couldn’t last forever, McPhee aimed to buy the land and the stock at rock-bottom prices, and he brought in a bunch of hired gunnies to back him against any opposition.

The situation seemed hopeless. And yet banker Finch Rogan had an idea that his old friend, Buck Halliday, might successfully challenge McPhee and his army of gunslingers.

Halliday didn’t want trouble. But the settling of trouble was how he made his living. So he tied down his .44 and came to deliver redemption to the town of the same name.

Adam Brady was one of many pseudonyms used by prolific Australian writer Desmond Robert Dunn (6 November 1929-5 May 2003). In addition to four crime novels published under his own name, Des was a tireless western writer whose career spanned more than fifty years and well in excess of 400 oaters. These quick-moving, vivid and always compelling stories appeared under such pen-names as Shad Denver, Gunn Halliday, Adam Brady, Brett Iverson, Matt Cregan, Walt Renwick and Morgan Culp. He is also said to have written a number of the ever-popular Larry Kent P.I. novels, but at this late date author attribution is almost impossible. He married and divorced twice, and had three children. He died at the age of 73 in Brisbane, Queensland.