James C. Work Libri

"Reproduced from the Dorchester book archive files"--Page 5.

AN APPOINTMENT WITH DEATH When Pasque Pendragon comes to live at his uncle's ranch in the Wyoming Territory, his mission is to track down the killers of his brothers. But everything changes with the arrival of a stranger at the ranch Christmas party. This giant of a man issues a bizarre challenge: He will fight a duel in which any man may fire three shots at him point-blank. But if the three miss, he may do the same to him in a year's time. Pasque accepts. To his horror, he misses and the stranger rides off into the night. Thus begins the consuming passion of Pasque's life, his journey to find the ominous giant. Wherever he travels, always looming before him is the shadow of the stranger...and the duel he must finish on the coming Christmas.

The Contractor is based upon an actual event, an 1868 murder in a railroad camp during the building of the Union Pacific. The killer, a construction contractor, flees the territory only to find himself being pursued by N.K. Boswell of the Rocky Mountain Detective Agency. When Boswell takes the murderer into custody, however, the detective finds that his problems have only just begun. Now he has to transport him back to Laramie. Forty miles of empty Iowa prairie, then the flooded Missouri River, then four hundred more miles of prairie. And all the while the murderer's brother and his gang of thugs are determined to stop Boswell at any cost.

When a treasure hunt at a Colorado mine turns deadly for some college students in the 1920s, a park ranger works with a lady friend who's employed by the FBI to suss out the root of the trouble. With a two-week vacation so close he can feel it, Rocky Mountain National Park Ranger Timothy Grayson McIntyre is torn away from fantasies about how much fly-fishing he can fit in when he's roped into using his free time for an informal investigation as a favor to a friend. That's fine with McIntyre, because the friend is FBI secretary Vi Coteau, and investigating at his sweetheart's behest makes it likely that he'll be spending time in close quarters with her. And no quarters could be closer than exploring Colorado's labyrinthine mines, where upper-crust undergraduate Richard Leup and two fraternity brothers have been exploring in search of that well-known buried treasure, the Dunraven Hoard. One of the boys has been killed during the explorations, and the other two seem the most likely suspects if the death turns out to be murder and not misadventure. Richard's father, William, a friend of Vi's, asks McIntyre and Vi to investigate, if only to keep Richard in the clear, though McIntyre needs no excuse to spend time with Vi outside the confines of her society set. McIntyre ponders motive and opportunity in putting together the pieces of the puzzle as the college boys, who've been given little individual personality of their own, are cut down one by one. He doesn't seem to realize that he'd probably solve the mystery faster if he spent more time tracking the killer and less considering where Vi stores her gun

Small Delights Lodge in Rocky Mountain National Park seems to be under siege. Shots fired at the owner, vehicles set on fire, boats sabotaged, electrocution booby traps, and deadfalls set up--and finally arson and murder. RMNP Ranger Tim McIntyre has plenty of suspects, including the owner of a neighboring resort, a rogue park ranger, and some Chicago mobsters who want Small Delights as a prohibition speakeasy. McIntyre's boss wants the situation resolved. The only help McIntyre can depend on consists of two attractive women, one a highly competent take-charge-and-do-it kind of gal named Polly and the other an FBI secretary with great legs and a Thompson submachine gun

The body they found floating face-down in the river was wearing only underpants. If it's a fishing accident, then is it a photography accident when a second corpse is discovered at a remote lake wearing nothing but her underwear? Ranger McIntyre's usual duties as a park ranger do not include murder -- or people in underwear, for that matter -- but he keeps on putting pieces of the puzzle together until they lead him to a backcountry hut and a murderer who orders him to disrobe. At gunpoint. Meanwhile, the suspect in an FBI investigation is selling salacious photographs of nudes . . . who appear to be very, very dead.

Two men are each sent into the mountains to investigate the problems of ranchers and homesteaders and soon encounter the silent giant known as The Guardian, who keeps trespassers away from the valley hidden within.

TO KNOW...OR DIE! Kyle Owen, a one-eyed cowboy working for the great Keystone Ranch, has finally been restored to physical and mental health following a harrowing ordeal. He knows that he was sent to a hidden valley in the mountains, and he knows what happened there almost killed him, but other than that, the journey is a large blank spot in his past. Kyle feels duty-bound to search for answers and uncover the hidden truth. Against everyone's objections, he sets out on a quest that will reveal the meaning of all that has happened to him, and begins the greatest adventure of his life.

Mysterious forces drive Gabe Allen to leave home in search of the Keystone Ranch. Job by job, handout by handout, he finally makes it. But his next journey will be far more dangerous, more demanding. He is to see an arrogant lady safely home to her own ranch where her sister is being held hostage by an outlaw gang whose leader is almost certainly insane. Gabe s only weapons are his wit, ingenuity, and a .44 revolver; but what can one man and one gun do against an outlaw who decorates his stronghold with the skeletons of other men who have come against him?"