When looking for a new western to read, Mickey Spillane is not an author I'd follow. He's known for his detective Mike Hammer series, full of beautiful women and shoot first,ask questions later action. While his westerns do contain beautiful women and lots of shooting, they do have pretty good story lines too. The action starts when Sheriff York kills a young man who does not know when to stop. The Sheriff then finds himself between two women in a land/ water dispute that no one is going to win. While Sheriff Caleb York is the central character in this book, these two women will not back down from a fight to the death.
While I may not have been looking for a Spillane western, I'm certainly glad I found this one.

SHOOT-OUT AT SUGAR CREEK: A Caleb York Western
Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
Kensington Books
ISBN-13: 978-1496730121
Hardcover
Historical Western

The Caleb York series has a special place in my heart for a couple of reasons. One is that I was practically raised on television westerns in my childhood. The other is that I am in awe of what author-extraordinaire Max Allan Collins has done with respect to riffing from an unfilmed movie manuscript by the late Mickey Spillane in order to create an entire series built around Caleb York, a gunslinger turned county sheriff and de facto marshal of the small but growing town of Trinidad, New Mexico in the late 1800s. Collins has painstakingly striven for accuracy in the series while focusing on the gritty action that is a prerequisite element of the traditional western genre.

SHOOT OUT AT SUGAR CREEK is my favorite of the series to date, primarily because of the manner in which Collins gently focuses at times upon the political elements of the sheriff’s position that were (and yes, still are) as important to the job as maintaining law and order. SHOOT OUT AT SUGAR CREEK takes place in the aftermath of HOT LEAD, COLD JUSTICE, in which an unexpected blizzard decimated a number of important cattle ranches in the Trinidad area, as well as almost ruining the business of Willa Cullin, the owner of the Bar-O ranch. Victoria Hammond, the widow of a Colorado cattle baron, has moved to Trinidad and bought up a number of ranches, setting her sights on the Bar-O as well. One of the results of her acquisitions is that she now owns the land through which Sugar Creek runs. This is important because Sugar Creek in the story’s present contains the only clean water suitable for cattle. Things in Trinidad get jumpstarted when William Hammond, Victoria’s son, attacks and rapes a saloon girl in town. He resists arrest at the hands of York and is soon assuming room temperature at the local undertaker’s. Victoria demonstrates her cold business acumen by attempting to leverage the incident as a means to force York to persuade Willa to sell the Bar-O to her. Willa is anything but inclined to do so, and is in fact ready to water her cattle in Sugar Creek by force if necessary, relying on an oral agreement with the former owner. This puts York in a quandary, given that he is conflicted between the professional and the personal as the result of his ongoing, if occasionally rocky, romantic relationship with Willa. That Victoria is an extremely attractive woman with a hot-blooded temperament is not lost on York, making things all the more difficult to him. Lest you think that Collins has taken to writing ripped-bodice westerns, however, be assured that SHOOT-OUT AT SUGAR CREEK contains plenty of sudden and stunning action, including a conclusion in which Collins pays homage to Spillane and his most famous creation in a manner which will cause fans of both --- including this reviewer --- to rever this installment going forward.


SHOOT-OUT AT SUGAR CREEK has everything that a reader of genre fiction --- western or otherwise --- could possibly want. Collins never disappoints in any venue but consistently raises his own bar with each new installment in this fine series which is and has been near the top of my must-read list practically from its inception. SHOOT-OUT AT SUGAR CREEK is the latest reason why. Strongly recommended.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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“Shoot-Out at Sugar Creek” by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins is a different kind of book than one might expect form Spillane. It is an intriguing Western genre book along the lines of many other similar ones.

Character development is pretty well done but perhaps a bit stereotypical in who is doing what and why. Caleb York is small town marshal and county sheriff in Trinidad, New Mexico. He dresses sort of like a stereotypical dandy, but he carries and knows how to use the Colt .44 in his gun belt. He was a former Wells Fargo detective and a very successful on.

In town, he is sweet on rancher named Willa Cullen and that feeling seems to be reciprocated. But trouble is brewing to as pressure on this romance in the form of another woman rancher named Hammond who has recently taken over after her husband died. She is a land-hog and after a severe winter and great die off of cattle controls the only clean water stream in the area…Sugar Creek.

A potential range war between the ladies seems imminent and Marshal York is caught between two beautiful women here as well as a saloon owner, equally beautiful, who also desires his company. With all the romantic entanglements, potential range war, hired guns, and more becomes an intriguing story. The story full of love, deceit, and finally death is one that is hard to put down.

I really enjoyed this book. Action, great characters, and great pacing. Will need to track other books in the Caleb York series. #ShootOutatSugarCreek #NetGalley

In a dry parched land filled with gunfire and cattle, the tag team of the late Mickey Spillane and his friend Max Allan Collins have delivered a double trifecta, six exciting westerns that are so good you'll read them cover to cover even if you don't normally read westerns. "Shoot-Out at Sugar Creek" offers us readers a Hatfield-McCoy type feud when knockout Victoria Hammond and her sons move into the Trinidad area with her eyes on Willa Cullen's Bar-O Ranch and aims to take it by any means necessary. Don't think the women out there in the Wild West were all shrinking violets. Never have two such forceful determined women faced off before and the West may never be the same. Like all the books in the Caleb York series, the writing is tight, the action furious, the stakes high. What a great read!

In Shootout at Sugar Creek, 6th of the Caleb York series (Kensington Books 2021), County Sheriff--and de facto Marshal--of Trinidad New Mexico finds himself in yet another death-defying battle not of his own making. His background includes lots of killing--almost all of men who deserved it--but many which would have left him dead if he'd been just a bit less observant of his surroundings or slower with his gun. Now, he thinks he has found a town to settle into as Sheriff, make sure life is safe for the residents and the female rancher he hopes to one day marry. That is, until another female rancher comes to town, buys up properties bankrupted by the Big Die (a time in Old West history where the winter cold and snow was so fierce, it killed off many of the cattle). When she sets her sights on the ranch owned by Caleb's girlfriend, Willa, neither will give in and a range war threatens. As town sheriff, Caleb is sworn to uphold the law and in this case, knows he must even though the woman he loves is on the opposite side. How does he serve justice and still keep Willa's love?

Before anything gets better, it gets a whole lot worse.

Max Collins wrote this story from notes left before Mickey Spillane died in 2006. As I read, I caught tantalizing whiffs of the unique style and intriguing twists of all Spillane stories. It is one of many Collins has written based on the prodigious outlines Spillane created and has everything you want in a good ol' western story.