I thought this was a fantastic Western story; and in all honesty I am not biased as I was the man on the original cover of the book; illustrated by my friend Tim Tanner; and it was truly a Sharps buffalo rifle I was holding when we did the photo shoot for the painting I modeled for. Giles Tippette is truly an outstanding writer and has held his own in the world of the Western genre..Doug Lindauer, ...

This book should have been made into a Clint Eastwood movie when it came out. The main character, Saulter, seemed to have been tailor-written for Eastwood. The mannerisms, the laconic speaking style, even the cover of the original novel had a picture of a a man reslembling Eastwood aiming a Sharps buffalo rifle at an unseen target.

As for the story, it was one of the best westerns I'd ever read. A dispicable main villain, a shadowy boss, and a foul-mouthed whore with a heart of gold she never let anyone see, were top-notch. Some of the other characters, namely Billy and Chiffo, were great.

The final shootout is one of the best in print.

A vivid and exciting look at the lives and exploits of 'brave men', a group who challenge mortality with their courage on the race-track and in the rodeo arena.

Tippette presents a host of believable characters that came alive with history. And old story told in a different way. Tippette uses vivid descriptions that gives the reader glimpses of the rugged old West.

One of my all time favorite novels. "The Mercenaries" is about the guerilla war in Zimbawe (formerly Rhodesia), and covert operations which are organized and launched against the guerilla's, and their jungle camps. Fast paced, with history, and aciton combined with excellent character portraits, Tippette has written an excellent, and powerful novel. Too bad he has never followed up with more novels, in this genre. Tippette seems to have devoted his more recent writting to Western novels. And perhaps one day I shall read one. Nevertheless, despite this novel being currently out of print, I strongly recommend it. And should a copy be found, the reader will not be disappointed. This novel would merit a re-release, for this generation of readers.

This is the best series of this type that I have ever read, again an again! Jim Haynes

You can't help but feel the drama of theis story. Outstanding series to read.

Are you a big fan of the movie "Tombstone"? I was. I loved the interaction between the characters -- Wyatt and Doc as played by Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer, in particular. I'm sorry to say that the book doesn't come close to capturing the excitement of the movie. I think this was Giles Tippette's first attempt at writing a novelization, and I don't think he did it very well.

What really ruins the book is the dialogue. A paraphrase:

Doc said, "And what would you do if 'she' walked in here?"
Wyatt said, "Who?"
Doc said, "You know who. That dusky-hued Lady Satan, that's who."
Wyatt said, "I'd probably just ignore her."
Doc said, "Ignore her?"
Wyatt said, "That's right, ignore her."

And so on. You get the impression that he simply used the Find -> Replace function to replace the line break between the character name and the line of dialogue with " said,".

In Tippette's defense, the rest of his writing, to my knowledge, is nothing like this. But this book is depressingly poor at conveying the magic of the screen. If you're interested in having it on your shelf, I strongly recommend tracking down a copy of the actual screenplay.