Gatling is quite possibly author Peter McCurtin’s finest achievement—high praise indeed when you consider that Carmody and Jim Saddler are also in the running … not to mention his hauntingly compelling stand-alone Mafia novel, Omerta. Fast and original, slick and often funny, filled with action, exotic locations and memorable characters, it’s hard to imagine that McCurtin ever wrote anything better than Gatling.
Neither was he any stranger to the house name of ‘Jack Slade’: he’d already written half a dozen Lassiter westerns under that pseudonym by the time he penned his first Gatling novel, Zuni Gold.
But not everyone shares my opinion about Gatling. And by the time McCurtin’s publisher, Dorchester Publishing, made a decision to cancel the series after the sixth book, McCurtin himself had already written books seven and eight.
Having paid for them, it certainly seemed a waste not to publish them, but for reasons best known to himself, McCurtin’s editor at Dorchester decided to change Gatling’s name to the similar-sounding ‘Garrity’ and then issue both Rapid Fire and Texas Renegade almost as if they were stand-alone stories with no real connection between them.
In the event, Gatling’s name was the only change that was made. Gatling’s boss, Colonel Harry Pritchett, remains exactly the same, as does Gatling/Garrity’s employer, the Maxim Arms Company.
When we at Piccadilly Publishing got the chance to reinstate Gatling’s correct name and issue these two orphan books as part of the series to which they rightfully belonged, we leapt at it. So what you are about to read now is Rapid Fire as it was originally intended. Texas Renegade will join it in a few months’ time.
Enjoy!
Ben Bridges
Piccadilly Publishing