Judge Torn arrives in the town of Hard Times for what could turn out to be the worst of times. Jack "The Corpsemaker" Jernkins has deadly plans for a Mississippi steamboat. With his gang of river pirates known as strikers, the notorious criminal mastermind plans to rob the Sultana, a "floating palace," and leave no man, woman, or child alive.
On the side-wheeler with Torn are a captured outlaw, a silver mine conman, his gorgeous daughter, and a crooked gambler who currently holds all the cards. Little do they know that upriver wait fifty bloodthirsty river pirates ready to attack.
1992 by Harper Paperbacks Harper Paperbacks (New York) 166 pp ISBN: 0-06-100488-X
The 8th book in The Judge series.
I was a fan of John Benteen's Fargo series back in the Seventies. In those novels the location mattered in the plot, and not all of the stories occurred in the West. I had this in mind when I wrote River Raid, which occurs on and along the Mississippi River in Louisiana.