Review - Shoot-Out at Sugar Creek - 4 stars

 

Shoot-Out at Sugar Creek by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins is a different kind of book than one might expect form Spillane.  It is an intriguing Western genre book along the lines of many other similar ones.

Character development is pretty well done but perhaps a bit stereotypical in who is doing what and why. Caleb York is small town marshal and county sheriff in Trinidad, New Mexico. He dresses sort of like a stereotypical dandy, but he carries and knows how to use the Colt .44 in his gun belt. He was a former Wells Fargo detective and a very successful on.

In town, he is sweet on rancher named Willa Cullen and that feeling seems to be reciprocated.  But trouble is brewing to as pressure on this romance in the form of another woman rancher named Hammond who has recently taken over after her husband died. She is a land-hog and after a severe winter and great die off of cattle controls the only clean water stream in the area…Sugar Creek. 

A potential range war between the ladies seems imminent and Marshal York is caught between two beautiful women here as well as a saloon owner, equally beautiful, who also desires his company.  With all the romantic entanglements, potential range war, hired guns, and more becomes an intriguing story. The story full of love, deceit, and finally death is one that is hard to put down.