Texas Fever by Donald Hamilton

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Texas Fever (1960) by Donald Hamilton


While best known for his excellent Matt Helm espionage series, Donald Hamilton also wrote a fair share of westerns and it becomes obvious within the first few pages of Texas Fever that he was a genuine master of the genre. There is an immediate grasp of setting, characters, and purpose that sets the story into motion as we’re introduced to young Chuck McAuliffe following his hardened Civil War hero father on a cattle drive from the McAuliffe Ranch in Texas through Indian Territory to Kansas. 

We enter the story in mid-drive and are alongside as their team runs into all manner of obstacles, from deadly bushwhackers in its opening pages to brutally enforced quarantines against potentially disease-carrying Texas longhorns in the border towns. Driving the narrative is a constant revenge-fueled feud with the leader of the bushwhackers who murdered Chuck’s brother and the sadistic and corrupt deputy enforcing the quarantine. 

Throughout the book, Hamilton keeps subverting expectations and genre tropes to deliver a surprisingly adult tale that isn’t afraid to delve into some dark psychological terrain. There’s plenty of action—both with guns and fists—and a very frank sexual awareness that may have turned some heads in 1960 with anyone expecting a sanitized Hollywood-style cowboy oater. 

I quite literally couldn’t put this book down and read it in a rush to see where the unexpected plot turns would take me next. 

This really is the very good stuff—highly recommended!

Reviewed by Steve Carroll 

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