Bitter Sage by Frank Gruber
Bitter Sage (1954) by Frank Gruber Frank Gruber was a highly prolific writer of pulps and various novels, including many westerns. 25 of his books were made into movies and he created 3 different western TV shows, in addition to writing 65 screenplays and 100 television episodes. I note all of this because reading Bitter Sage is like watching a classic Hollywood western movie from the heyday of the 50s. Wes Tancred is one of the best gunslingers in the old west, but he’s running from a violent past and a lie about who he is and what he’s done that has taken on mythic proportions. Following a fateful intervention that sees him gun down 3 would-be thieves, Tancred ends up in Sage City, Kansas, a cattle town owned and lorded over by the crooked mayor, Jacob Fugger. Taking a job as a printer at the local newspaper, Tancred is inevitably pulled into a growing war between the uprigh...