Wild Bill #1: Dead Man's Hand

by Judd Cole

Notorious for his way with a gun, the feared and legendary Wild Bill Hickok is hired to protect an inventor heading through the most dangerous lands of the West. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0843944870
• ISBN13: 9780843944877
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Leisure Books
• Length: 161 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 4.2" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

PORTRAITS OF WILD BILL

I have read all 8 books of this mini-series, and enjoyed each one. I have many books of non-fiction concerning Wild Bill on my shelves also. For me these fiction books are very enjoyable offering interesting views of Hickok both fictional and not as they meander along. As of this writing, Leisure Books is getting ready April 1, 2008, to reprint the entire series, and that alone should give some indication of the past interest in this mini-series of a few years back. It's too bad the other reviewer here did not see the value in this series, it is really an enjoyable read for one and all who enjoy western fiction. And few other real life personages from our western past has had more 'fiction' doled out about his life, many times under guise of 'non-fiction'. At least in Judd Cole's entertaining books it is correctly labeled fiction rather than fact. The story is not overly difficult: a new invention, an ice making machine is being patented, with some men trying to wrest the machine from the German scientist inventor. One of the immediate uses of ice on the plains was the reducing of fever in diseases, especially the scarlet fever now raging in the big pest house east of town in Denver. Due to a large, inexhaustable availability of man made ice, the death rate has dropped 80 per cent. As this new invention is put on display aboard a train, Wild Bill is hired by Allan Pinkerton at $5 per day, to guard both it and its inventor. One episode quickly follows another, even a Lakota war party attack, before the tale reaches it end. But touch Wild Bill for luck, it is a good read and a good series. One small note: Judd Cole has Wild Bill drinking Old Taylor Bourbon in the book, yet the earliest I can determine an Old Taylor distillery being established is 1887. This novel can be dated by mention of 3 years after Promontory, Utah, 1869, and George Pullman cars in 1870, which makes the date of the novel, 1872. Sorry.........these dates make Old Taylor Bourbon being in existence pretty slim. Great reading none-the-less. The reprinted Wild Bill series is now showing up in bookstores, get them before it is too late. This is the 2nd printing since '99 and there will probably not be another, book-a-roos. Semper Fi.