GENTLEMAN AND GUNMEN: R.F. RYAN'S OF A DIFFERENT STAMP

Of a Different Stamp is R.F. Ryan's second book to feature Finnegan Gilhooly, a Pinkerton man trying to find his place in a changing America of the 1880s. The first books dealt with coal mining tensions and the Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania. Now we got out west as he works for ranchers and deals with outlaws during the last phase of the territory's time as a frontier. It's still the old west, but it isn't as cut and dry as usual.

After in a jailhouse meeting with his decade long nemesis, Frank James, Gilhooly wonders if he has a sense of purpose, especially with the agency finding less use for his skill with a gun, becoming more of an intelligence group and fighting laborers more often than train robbers. he grabs the chance to accompany Epham Killkenny heir of the famed whiskey distributor, to accompany him on an excursion out west on a hunting trip to collect animal specimens. When they get to the Dakota Territory, Killkenny introduces him to some men involved in the ranching business he dabbles in. They include Montana cattle baron Stuart Granville and a young Teddy Roosevelt. They offer him a job as a stock detective to deal with the rustlers and horse thieves plaguing them. Seeing it as a chance to still apply his skills, he take it.

Gilhooly and Killkenny take up residence at Stuart's ranch. Gilhooly sets up a system with ranches to gather information on the criminals, learning his adversaries are more devious than expected. He also gets friction from Stuart and some of the other stockman who would prefer him to be more of an executioner.

Ryan makes place and period an engaging and colorful place. He accomplishes this mainly through Gilhooly's interaction against it. Gilhooly and Killkenny's trip from Chicago to the Dakotas captures both the comforts and challenges of a gentleman adventurer of the time. We feel Gilhooly's awe of the land as he takes it in. That frontier grows more formidable when they spend time at Sturat's ranch and Gilhooly must adapt to it. Ryan creates a running joke with him shooting different creatures he mistakes as as elk. The people like Stuart, Roosevelt, and later Stuart's top hand Teddy Blue Abbott come off more like full characters that support the story, more than historical figures who stand out of it, mainly due to the way Finnegan sizes them up.

R.F. Ryan allows us to breath in this world. The book is more of a hang out with Gilhoolly bantering with Killkenny as they travel and hunt animals an outlaws, as well as romance the ladies of Stuart's ranch. Still, he knows when to drop in a gritty gunfight of blood and gunsmoke. Next

Ryan will have Gilhooly taking on anarchists in Chicago and Mexico. I'm there.