Lockhart's Nightmare

The last collaboration between two popular authors weaves a complex tale of 1880s murder, fraud, and justice as two falsely accused fugitives run from the law and try to prove their innocence before U.S. Marshal Rance Hanson or the real killers find them.

This second collaboration (after last year's entertaining Fairchild's Passage) by Barton and Williams is a fast-paced but unlikely cross-country chase?by horse, buggy, train and blimp?with bewildered innocents pursued by relentless lawmen and mysterious killers. Wrongly accused of a fur bank robbery, Civil War vet James Lockhart and vivacious grifter Marian Taylor escape jail determined to find the real killers and clear their own names. Running pell-mell after clues and false trails, the couple don a variety of disguises, unable to trust anyone, even each other. Starting out as a predictable hayburner, this tale soon tests the reader's patience with preposterous shoot-'em-ups, James Bond-like escapes and detective work (from both lawmen and the accused) that's as full of holes as the bodies that litter these adventures.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

War hero James Lockhart is falsely accused of murder and theft and pursued by surly, self-righteous lawman Rance Henson, known as "Marshal Doom." Lockhart's first and nearly final encounter with Henson takes place aboard the Union Pacific's Pullman Palace in the midst of a poker game with other "drummers" with whom he regularly travels. Along with the real villain, they include young Opportunity Knox, on the road promoting the aerobat, a flying machine shaped like a cigar with a basket underneath. Also aboard is beautiful Marian Taylor, an actress clearly more at home with Fagin than Stanislovski. What begins as verbal sniping between Lockhart and the light-fingered lady ends as true love on the dodge as the chase winds down. Along the way, the marshal uses the railroad, the telegraph, newspapers, and finally, the aerobat to track Lockhart and Marian from city to city. This last collaboration between Barton and the late Williams adds up to an entertaining effort. Budd Arthur