THE SANDBAGGERS. ITV/Yorkshire Television. First Series: September 18, 1978 – October 30, 1978; second series: January 28, 1980 – March 3, 1980; third series: June 9, 1980 – July 28, 1980. Created by Ian Mackintosh. Cast: Roy Marsden as Neil Burnside, Ray Lonnen as Willie Caine, Bob Sherman as Jeff Ross, Alan MacNaughtan as Sir Geoffrey Wellingham, Jerome Willis as Matthew Peele. Executive Producer: David Cunliffe. Producer: Michael Ferguson (all episode but one) or Derek Bennett (one episode).

   Forgotten today, the British TV spy series THE SANDBAGGERS remains one of television’s greatest spy dramas. THE SANDBAGGERS featured a dark realism style. It was a cynical spy drama that existed during a time when it was difficult to know who the good guys were. THE SANDBAGGERS showed life in the real SIS (MI5) and gave a more truthful look at both sides during the Cold War then they taught us in school.

   The series was originally meant to be a temporary fill-in when another planned series for Yorkshire TV fell apart. THE SANDBAGGERS was to last only one series (series is the British term for season) of seven episodes. It would prove popular enough to last two more series and would have made a fourth if not for the mysterious disappearance of creator and probable spy Ian Mackintosh.

   In an outline attempting to sell the premise as a TV series Mackintosh described the series primary focus would be “with the triumphs and failures of SIS headquarters, the power-struggles within SIS itself and the uses and abuse of its power vis-à-vis Government policy.”

   It is impossible to think of THE SANDBAGGERS without Ian Mackintosh. Hamish Ian Mackintosh MBE (July 26, 1940 – last known alive July 7, 1979) served in the Royal Navy from 1958-1976 and rose to the rank of Lieutenant Commander. On his retirement from the Royal Navy he was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).

   Mackintosh tried writing while still in the Navy and his first of five thrillers A SLAYING IN SEPTEMBER was published in 1967. All five were failures with critics and readers and our own Mystery*File reviewer Steve, which you can read here.

   In 1973 Mackintosh co-created the admired BBC TV series WARSHIP (1973-1977). Ian would go on to create and write WILDE ALLIANCE (ITV 1978), THUNDERCLOUD (ITV 1979) and THE SANDBAGGERS, all three for Yorkshire Television. He also wrote tie-in novels for WARSHIP, WILDE ALLIANCE and THE SANDBAGGERS. One other tie-in novel for THE SANDBAGGERS was THE SANDBAGGER: THINK OF A NUMBER (1980) written by Donald Lancaster (YELLOWTHREAD STREET writer William Marshall). Ian also wrote some non-fiction books many featuring his interest in planes and military history.

   While Ian Mackintosh was the creative spirit behind the success of THE SANDBAGGERS others played equally important roles in the series success. David Cunliffe had worked in British television since the 1950s. He first met Mackintosh when both worked on the series WARSHIP and became friends. Cunliffe was the Controller of Drama at Yorkshire Television and worked with Ian on all three YTV series Mackintosh created and wrote. Yorkshire Television was the local Leeds and Yorkshire area ITV affiliate and produced television programs for ITV including such series as HARRY’S GAME, THE MAIN CHANCE and RAFFLES. Cunliffe was in charge of every aspect of THE SANDBAGGERS including final script approval.

   Derek Bennett was the director and producer for the first episode filmed (the third episodes aired) IS YOUR JOURNEY REALLY NECESSARY but a disagreement between Bennett and Mackintosh forced Derek to leave. Michael Ferguson would replace Bennett. Cunliffe turned daily production decisions over to Ferguson who as producer and sometime director would remain for the entire run.

   Not surprisingly for British TV, at the time the series had a low budget and sometimes it showed. During series one Roy Marsden was the highest paid in the cast making around $1900 an episode.

   The soundtrack was a positive aspect of the series. It did not have one (with rare exceptions). Often such absence of music (not unusual for early British TV) can make scenes seem awkward or slow paced, but it worked to this realistic drama’s advantage. TV and film spies are known for great theme songs and THE SANDBAGGERS has one of the best, written by Roy Budd (GET CARTER).

   Roy Marsden (P.J. JAMES’ ADAM DALGLIESH CHRONICLES) was the perfect fit and first choice to play Neil Burnside — the ruthless, arrogant Director of Operations. Marsden modeled his portrayal of Burnside on his observations of Mackintosh. It was a good choice as Marsden gave Burnside a depth and allowed the audience to still root for and respect the at times unlikable character.

   Burnside had two advantages in running the SIS operations. His first was based on the very real special relationship the SIS had with the CIA. The CIA respected the opinions of the SIS and thus shared information with the small British agency that it shared with no other country or agency. This gave Burnside information others did not have.

   Head of London Station for the CIA was Jeff Ross. Ross and Burnside worked well together and respected each other but that did not stop both from using the other when it was in the best interest of their agency.

   The second advantage was more personal. Burnside was the ex-son-in-law and still a friend of the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary Godfrey Wellingham who in the government chain of command was above both of Burnside’s bosses Director – General or “C,” and the Deputy Director of SIS. Wellingham had hopes Burnside and his daughter would reunite but also realized Neil had chosen his work over his marriage.

   The first “C” of the series was Sir James Greenley, whose lack of spy experience left him naive at times about the reality of the world of SIS. Burnside would grow to respect him. Greenley trusted Neal’s judgment and experience even if he was horrified by the immorality of their actions. Greenley would retire due to health problems and was replaced by John Tower Gibbs, a long time opponent of Burnside.

   The Deputy Director was Matthew Peele who served in intelligence during WWII, ambitious, clueless, and someone Burnside usually found easy to manipulate.

   The confident and determined Burnside often went over the heads of his SIS bosses to use his ex-father-in-law influence, and he had no problem lying to all of them if it suited his vision of what was right and how to handle the problem.

   The gratuitous sex, over the top violence, and absurdly complicated gadgets of James Bond was fiction in this world. This was a world where work in the field could be dull but was always dangerous. The turnover of Special Agents (field agents at SIS) was high during the series.

   Due to the SIS small budget Burnside had only one to three Special Agents at a time. It takes a special person to become a SIS Special Agent, these were the agents who were assigned the dirty jobs no one else wanted or could handle.

   Head of Special Section (Sandbagger One) was Willie Caine, a womanizing, working-class, ex-military with a strong moral code. Willie and Burnside respected each other but also had major disagreements over Burnside’s methods. Ray Lonnen (HARRY’S GAME, YELLOWTHREAD STREET) was able to make spy Willie Caine a sympathetic human living a life of loneliness but surviving because of his pride in his work.

   The series featured believable characters, realistic dialog and plots that were cynical with dramatic twists that can sometime still surprise forty years later. The focus was less on the Russians and more on the self-interest power plays among the British government and its allies.

    “Special Relationship” was the scheduled final episode for this fill-in TV series. It is arguably the best episode of the series and certainly the most important. The cast strongly objected to the story’s ending. However, the critics and public’s reaction lead Yorkshire TV to approve THE SANDBAGGERS for another series of six episodes. Shortly after that Yorkshire added seven more episodes and two weeks of location shooting at the luxurious Malta.

   Roy Marsden commented on the reaction to the episode, saying, “When “Special Relationship” was shown, the response all over the country was staggering. Every radio program was taking about what had happened.”

“Special Relationship” (October 30, 1978) Written by Ian Mackintosh. Directed by Michael Ferguson. Additional Cast: Diane Keen as Laura Dickens and Richard Vernon as Sir Greenley. *** Burnside and agent Laura Dickens have fallen in love. During an assignment in East Germany Laura is captured. Burnside searches for a possible prisoner in Allies hands to exchange for Laura. He finds one but there is a price.

   Due to a labor strike that forced Yorkshire and ITV off the air for two months and the disappearance of Mackintosh, it would be fourteen months after the first series aired that THE SANDBAGGERS returned to the air. It had been decided to split the thirteen episodes up into two series. The second series aired six episodes from January 28 to March 3, 1980. The final seven episode third series aired from June 9 to July 28, 1980.

   It was July 1979, six episodes for the second series had been filmed and Mackintosh had finished the scripts for all of the rest of the scheduled episodes but three. This is when the cast and crew headed off for two weeks of on location filming in Malta. David Cunliffe remained behind to run his other series for Yorkshire. Producer Michael Ferguson remained in London dealing with production work.

   Ian decided to take a break. Mackintosh loved to travel, as did his girl friend of over two years Susan Insole. Mackintosh’s family and friends were used to him disappearing for a while and then suddenly reappearing. For this trip they had invited an old friend of Mackintosh British Airways pilot Graham Barber.

   The trip would take them to the United States mainland and then to Hawaii and finally back to London by Alaska. They were flying over the Gulf of Alaska, an area of beautiful sights and an area of intense interest of both sides during the Cold War. The weather was clear and the waters calm when Graham Barber radioed an emergency call for help, “We are going down in the sea. I’m going to make for the very, very, small island just to the east of Shuyak Island.”

   The plane, a Rallye 235, and its three passengers were never found.

   A lack of proof of death and Mackintosh’s long habit of disappearing and returning without warning put everything on an awkward hold. Reportedly the American state department held meetings discussing the possibility Mackintosh had defected to the Russian. Even today Ian’s brother Lawrie does not believe Ian died in the plane crash.

   Series Two began with a less confident Neil Burnside who was more protective of his Special Agents. Below is the sixth and final episode of the second series and is a good sample of the characters and how Mackintosh’s SIS worked.

“Operation Kingmaker.” (March 3, 1980) Written by Ian Mackinston. Directed by Alan Grint. Additional Cast: Dennis Burgess as John Tower Gibbs and Elizabeth Bennett as Diana Lawler/ *** Burnside learns an enemy from his past John Gibbs may become the new “C.” Neil attempts to maneuver the system to install a boss he can control. His desperate choice is the ambitious idiot Matthew Peele, current Deputy Director.

   Eventually Cunliffe could no longer wait for Ian’s return and with three episodes left that needed to be written, Cunliffe hired two writers to write the needed episodes. Gidley Wheeler (WARSHIP) wrote two episodes, MY NAME IS ANNA WISEMAN and WHO NEEDS ENEMIES. Arden Winch (WINGS) did SOMETIMES WE PLAY DIRTY TOO. All three were passable adventures but were too heavy-handed and lacked the style of Mackintosh.

   Mackintosh had alreadyfinished the script for the last episode. Oddly enough for a man about to disappear, the episode ended in a cliffhanger. It is also one of Ian’s weakest scripts and suffers from believability issues.

“Opposite Number.” (July 28, 1980) Written by Ian Mackintosh. Directed by Peter Cregeen. Additional Cast: Michael Cashman as Mike Wallace and Sue Holderness as Marianne Straker *** Burnside has grown weary of the constant fighting within the system. As a long passionate opponent of the Salt talks (Strategic Arms Limitations) Neil decides destroying his career was a worthy price to pay if he can get the Russians to leave the talks.

   The cliffhanger was not a surprise since Mackintosh expected a fourth series. Lonnen had signed for a fourth series. It is believed that Ian’s plans for series four had Willie promoted to Director of Operations and Burnside would become “C.” But without Ian Mackintosh the decision was made to end THE SANDBAGGERS. Cunliffe, Ferguson and Marsden moved on to do the series AIRLINE.

   Some today wonder how popular THE SANDBAGGERS really was if so few who watched TV at the time remember it. Not having access to the ratings of 1978 or 1980 I suspect THE SANDBAGGERS critical acclaim had more to do with its success than number of people watching.

   THE SANDBAGGERS did appear on American television in the late 1980s and inspired some enthusiastic fan clubs. It currently can be seen on streaming service BritBox.

   On October 12, 2003 appearing in the New York Times was “TELEVISION; Spies Who Were Cool and Very Very Cold” by Terrence Rafferty. He wrote:

   Whatever happened to Ian Mackintosh, Susan Insole and Graham Barber will most likely remain a mystery, but it left us all with a story worthy of an episode of THE SANDBAGGERS.

SOURCES:

THE LIFE AND MYSTEROUS DEATH OF IAN MACKINTOSH: THE INSIDE STORY OF THE SANDBAGGERS AND TELEVISION’S TOP SPY by Robert G. Folsom (Potomac Books, 2012).

Wikipedia

JOHN O’GROAT JOURNAL AND CAITHNESS COURIER (3/1/13) “Did Spy Writers Disappearance Mirror His Fiction?” by Calum Macleod

NY TIMES (10/12/03) “Television Spies Who Were Cool and Very Very Cold” by Terrence Rafferty

HARRY STEPHEN KEELER – Sing Sing Nights. Dutton, hardcover, 1928. Wildside, paperback, 2017

SING SING NIGHTS. Monogram, 1934. Conway Tearle, Hardie Albright, Jameson Thomas, Henry Kolker, Lotus Long, and Boots Mallory. Screenplay by Charles Logue and Marion Orth, “suggested by” the novel by Harry Stephen Keeler. Directed by Lewis D. Collins.

   This is about as loopy as the average Keeler novel, but a bit more convoluted than most — most Keeler, that is. By normal standards… well, one can’t judge Keeler by normal standards and there you are.

   The framework of Sing Sing Nights hinges on the premise that three well-known authors of popular fiction each decided—independent of the others – to murder an absolute bounder.

   And that each of them decided to do it on the same night.

   By the same means.

   At the same time.

   In the same place.

   And that each of them hid there, unaware of the others’ presence till all three fired on him at the same exact instant. But not quite; there are only two bullets in the body. One of the killers is technically innocent of the crime.

   Faced with this patent absurdity, and with three convicted men sentenced to death (on the same day, natch) who each not only believes he is guilty, but also wants to be guilty, the Governor of the unnamed state goes it one further: He gets all three together and hands them a signed pardon with a blank where the name is to be filled out. The three of them are to determine who is innocent and put his name on the Pardon.

   Problem is, of course, they can’t for the life of them (literally!) figure out whudidn’tit, so they decide that each will tell a story, and free the author of the one their Jailer likes best.

   If you think there maybe were some wild coincidences in that framework, wait’ll you get to the stories themselves. Keeler had a completely unique gift for spinning the wildest improbabilities with total straight-faced conviction. You or I could not commit the howlers Keeler wrote. Our minds could not conceive of the enormous coincidences that invest his stories, and if they could, we couldn’t submit them for publication without dying of shame.

   But he not only managed, he did it with a clear-headed conviction and moral certitude that stagger the imagination. Reading his wild tales, one is reminded irresistibly of Galileo insisting that the Earth does too move around the Sun, or Gauguin painting the sky green: A genius convinced of the impossible finds some way to make it Truth.

   I don’t normally reveal too much about the mysteries I read, but I can’t help recounting the highlights of the first tale in Sing Sing Nights. Readers are given WARNING that PLOT AND SOLUTION ARE GIVEN BELOW!!

   Okay? Have all the kids left room? Well, the first tale hinges on the notion that the Hero attends a Costume Party in the same get-up as an International Criminal. And not only that, but also he has the same initials as the Thief. So when the Thief’s accomplice sends an urgent note to the party, the butler assumes it’s for him… all the more so as the accomplice happens to have the same initials as the hero’s friend!

   Said accomplice is found dead a few pages later, and a chapter or two beyond, hero determines that the accomplice’s murderer was none other than…..The Butler! Who delivered the message to him at the party, and in so doing, recognized handwriting of the long-lost brother who cheated him out of a fortune fifty years ago!

END OF WARNING!

   You gotta admire writing like that. Or if not the writing, at least the chutzpah that went into it.

   And that ain’t all. The whole book is full of stuff like that, right up to an ending that must be seen to be disbelieved. I loved it.

   As a footnote, Sing Sing Nights was filmed by Monogram in 1934. The film uses the same basic howler of a premise, but where the book delivered three tales of lunatic wonder, the movie settles for a few short vignettes showing what a cad the murdered man (Conway Tearle) was and how the others (Albright, Thomas & Kolker) acted quite rightly in gunning him down like the mongrel cur that he was. So there.

   To its credit, Sing Sing Nights is competently acted and producer Paul Malvern uses his limited resources quite well in evoking exotic lands and climes on a restricted budget – aided by Cameraman Archie Stout, who went on to work regularly for John Ford. But these fall short of redeeming the leaden direction and perfunctory screenplay. This one is a dog, and a rather slow one at that.

   I should also add that in 1935 Monogram used part of the second story in Sing, “Twelve Coins of Confucius” as the basis of The Mysterious Mr. Wong.

   But that is a story for another day.

   “Lady of the Ark” is a song from Kyle Craft’s debut album Dolls of the Highland (Sub Pop, 2016).

RON GOULART – The Tijuana Bible. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1989. No paperback edition.

   Picture this — a cartoonist working alone at night; a knock at the window; a dying man with a message; a sap on the head; a beautiful blonde hiding in the closet — then poof! — they both disappear. And then a map, the key to a treasure, well over $2,000,000 …

   … worth of old comic books. My mouth waters. (*) This is a funny book, of the laugh-out-loud variety. It’s no more than lightweight entertainment, I admit, but it’s expertly done. (And it can’t really be that easy to do, or it’d be done more often, and a lot of authors try.)

(*) Confession time. It was my secret ambition as a kid — and I’ve never told anyone this before — to own a copy of every comic book ever published. (My second ambition was to grow up to own a newsstand.) I couldn’t afford it at the time, and the way things are, I could afford it even less today. (I don’t own a newsstand either.)

ACCOMPLICE. PRC, 1946. Richard Arlen, Veda Ann Borg, Tom Dugan, Francis Ford, Herbert Rawlinson. Screenplay Irving Elman, Frank Gruber based on the latter’s novel Simon Lash, Private Detective. Directed by Walter Colmes.

   A complex plot, sharp dialogue, a smart story based on a classic hardboiled novel, and a well-staged shootout in the California desert at a castle turned dude ranch run by crooked Francis Ford are all on the plus side for this fast moving mystery film.

   So why isn’t it better?

   The directors penchant for flat two shots on cheap sets doesn’t help, but even that isn’t the real problem.

   The real problem is the cast.

   This kind of hard-boiled mystery depends on delivery, snappy tongue-in-cheek delivery by actors with on screen charisma and style.

   That is neither Richard Arlen or Veda Ann Borg, who deliver their lines with all the skill and depth of a high school adaptation of Arsenic and Old Lace.

   Book-loving Simon Lash would rather try to prove Billy the Kid was a backshooter than take a case, especially a divorce case, but when he is broke and Joyce Marlow, nee Mrs. James Bonniwell shows up, the girl who left him at the altar ten years earlier when he was a promising lawyer, shows up on his doorstep, his partner Eddie (Tom Dugan) convinces him to see her.

   Simon suspects Joyce is looking for evidence for a divorce case against her banker hubby, but she convinces him her husband has lost his memory and gone missing. But when his search leads to a love nest the husband is keeping with another woman, Simon thinks he has been taken by Joyce again — until she receives a call while he is confronting her that her husband has been found with his head blown off in the desert.

   From then on things move at a pace until the finale when Simon is taken prisoner at the above mentioned desert castle and escapes to shoot it out with the bad guys while unfolding the complex and well planned plot.

   Sounds great, and on the written page the dialogue by Gruber from his novel has the punch and snap that is proper to the best private eye fare on the screen. The only problem is the delivery which could gives pancakes a run for which is flatter.

   There isn’t a moment of charm, a twinkle of eye, or a playful seductive moment in the film. It’s in the script, but Arlen and Borg deliver their lines (and no one else does any better, including the unfunny comic relief) like they were reading them off a prompter for the first time.

   You know you are in trouble when you find yourself longing for Tom Conway or Warner Baxter from the Falcon and Crime Doctor films.

   Had this been a Michael Shayne entry with Lloyd Nolan or a Falcon or even Charlie Chan film it would be a classic, but alas it is a film which stars Richard Arlen and Veda Ann Borg and the biggest collection of stiffs collecting a pay check in the history of film.

   Even a master like Frank Gruber can’t overcome amateur night at the Bijou.
   

   I sold this on eBay and mailed it out today:

   I sold this on Amazon and mailed it out today:

   To two different buyers. Sometimes the world is a very spooky place.

MAN WITH TWO LIVES. Monogram, 1942. Edward Norris, Marlo Dwyer, Eleanor Lawson, Frederick Burton, Addison Richards, Edward Keane, Hugh Sothern, Tom Seidel. Director: Phil Rosen.

   The last time I began one of these online reviews by talking about the “no name” cast, I was quickly made fun of, for not recognizing any of players. So, having not yet learned my lesson, how many of the names above, not including Phil Rosen, have you heard of?

   No matter. Low budget movie or not, there was only one of the members of the cast who didn’t seem to me to be up for the part he was playing. As for the movie itself, it begins in pure sci-fi mode, with a doctor seen surrounded by all kinds of electronic gadgets and bubbling test tubes set up in the lab he has put together in his back bedroom. After years of research, it turns out that he has brought a dead dog’s heart back to life.

   Does it work on humans? He doesn’t know, but when the son of a friend is killed in an automobile accident, he is persuaded to try. By pure coincidence the attempt is made at the stroke of midnight, exactly the same time as when the switch is pulled on a notorious killer in the death house at a nearby state penitentiary.

   The audience catches on far more quickly than the friends and relatives of the young man who is the subject of the experiment. He awakes having amnesia but soon begins to find himself drawn to the dead mob leader’s headquarters. Surprisingly quickly he becomes the new head of the gang.

   Even worse, he spurns the girl he was engaged to marry to take up with knockout beauty who was the dead gangster’s moll. There is eventually some talk of the “transmigration of the soul” to explain all this scientifically, but even if it’s all hooey at the heart of it, this is a fun movie to watch.

   This in spite of what definitely qualifies as a “dumb ending.” And no names in the cast or not.

ROB KANTNER – Concrete Hero. Ben Perkins #9. Harper, paperback original, 1994

   This is Kantner’s third Perkins book for Harper after doing six for Bantam, all paperback originals.

   Ben donates himself to a charity auction at the urging of his ex-love and the mother of his young daughter, and os “won” by an Ann Arbor lady who wants him to look into the death of her husband. The man, a copywriter for an ad agency, was found dead in his office of what appeared to be an auto-erotic asphyxiation.

   Ben pokes around halfheartedly,wanting to be done with it, but the case won’t go away. The dead man participated in a porno computer bulletin board that specialized in digitized photos, and it appears that too much good, unclean fun may have led to murder, Meanwhile, an out-of-town friend shows up in bad shape, and takes up with one of Ben’s best friends, and he’s got to worry about that, too.

   Like most series PI novels, or most crime series of any kind for that matter, the Perkins books pretty much follow their own internal pattern each time. Perkins gets a case, pokes around, spends some pages on personal relationships, gets some help from his cop friends, decides to handle things himself, and brings it all to a violent climax, usually with extreme danger and injury to himself.

   Nothing wrong with that if you like how it’s done, and I’ve liked how Kantner did it in the past. I still do, some, but not as much as before. Some of the characterizations are good and I like his storytelling, but I’m getting weary of the state cop who’s more and more willing to act like Perkins’ sidekick, and I didn’t think Kantner spent nearly enough time here setting up his villains.

   It’s decent, but he can do and has done better.

       The Ben Perkins series —

1. The Back-Door Man (1986)

2. The Harder They Hit (1987)
3. Dirty Work (1988)
4. Hell’s Only Half Full (1989)
5. Made in Detroit (1990)

6. The Thousand Yard Stare (1991)
7. The Quick and the Dead (1992)
8. The Red, White and Blues (1993)
9. Concrete Hero (1994)
10. Trouble is What I Do (story collection, 2005)
11. Final Fling (2007)

RAY HOGAN – The Vengeance Gun. Ace Double 67580, paperback original; 1st printing, July 1973. Published back-to-back with Powdersmoke Partners, by L. L. Foreman. Thorndike Press, hardcover, 1993.

   Take another look at the title. As you may or may not recall, I reviewed a western movie with much the same basic story line as this one. The movie was entitled Panhandle, and you can read my comments here. In both cases the leading protagonist has a mission, that of avenging the shooting death of his brother.

   Rod Cameron played John Sands in the movie. In the book at hand, the hero is a young fellow named Tom Rademacher. He’s been on the trail of his brother’s killer for five years, riding from town to town for all that time, but never quite finding him.

   But when hits the range where a gent named Joe Keck wants to take over, he finds himself siding with a girl and her brother who are the last holdouts against Keck and his gang. If this sounds familiar, it is.

   One difference between the book and the movie, is that after five years on the trail, Tom is starting to have doubts. In the movie, the death of John Sands’ brother has just happened. It is no wonder that he can’t be distracted from his mission, as was pointed out in the review and the comments that followed.

   I liked the book more, though. I identify with heroes who have doubts. I find that there’s more to the story if they do. It’s not to say that The Vengeance Gun is great literature. It isn’t. It ends far too quickly and abruptly, for example. At only 111 pages log, it’s over before you know it. You expect happy endings in westerns, but this one’s far too easy.