A chance meeting in a small town railroad station pits Judge Clay Torn against the most ruthless, powerful, and violent man in all of Kansas. Ike Dobson is Kansas -- he has the entire state in an iron grip of fear. Cross him, you die.
Now, Dobson's wife Mary has run off, unable to tolerate his cruelty any longer. Dobson is killing mad -- and Judge Torn becomes his next target. For after meeting terrified Mary at the station, Judge Torn offers to help her, unaware that Ike Dobson has vowed to spill the blood of anyone who aids his wife's escape.
But when you declare war on Clay Torn, no matter who you are, you'd better be prepared for one hell of a battle ... a battle of lead not law ... a battle whose final verdict will judge one man right, and one man dead.
1990 by Harper Paperbacks Harper Paperbacks (New York) 199 pp ISBN: 0-06-100072-8
During my long stint writing for Signet, my agent, Ethan Ellenberg, presented me with the opportunity to write a series of conventional westerns based on a character created by Harper Paperbacks, to be written using the pen name Hank Edwards. I jumped at the chance. At the time I was writing westerns for Zebra Books, and this opportunity made it possible for me to write full-time. I penned ten of the twelve Judge westerns. Why were there only twelve? I have no idea. There were a couple of long-running western series like Longarm that apparently did quite well. But they were "adult" westerns. The Judge wasn't. Whatever the truth of it, I enjoyed writing these stories, and I think all in all they were pretty good reading.