Blood Game

Leo Guild, sometime bounty hunter, has spent the previous three weeks riding shotgun for one of the last stage lines remaining in the Midwest. But jobs were few and far between and Guild was nearly broke.

So it was foolish for Guild to contemplate refusing the simple job he’s asked to take—finding a missing prizefighter. Guild had always hated boxing; he considered it primitive and repellent, a blood game in fact. Now he finds himself taking an even more intense dislike to John T. Stoddard, the boxing promoter who wants to hire him. Still, the money is good for a few hours’ work, and Guild decides to take the job.

Guild quickly finds the fighter holed up in the home of his Mexican girlfriend, but the fighter has some grievances with Stoddard. After getting beaten up by the angry fighter, Guild should have called it a day. He never could have anticipated the trouble ahead when he foolishly agreed to guard the fighter and the purse.

Edward Gorman established a memorable character in Guild, followed by the haunting Death Ground, which was praised by Publishers Weekly as “a Western for grownups, written in a lean, hard-boiled style.”