A Killing in Kiowa by Lewis B. Patten

Patten was the author of more than a hundred western novels. 

Review

A Killing in Kiowa by Lewis B. Patten was first published in 1972 and won the Spur Award for best western novel published that year. The book is a taut, 144-page Signet paperback that covers twenty-four eventful hours in the life of Sheriff Matt Wyatt. It starts with four teenage boys trying to rape a prostitute as she's walking home from work at one in the morning and then beating to death a man who tries to stop them. The boys flee from the scene, and the intended rape victim yells for help. Before he dies, the man names two of his assailants to the doctor who arrives on the scene first. The sheriff learns the two names from the doctor and sets out to arrest the boys. Once they are in jail, he quickly learns the names of the other two from their accomplices and rounds them up as well, though bringing in the last one -- a rancher's boy -- proves to be difficult. 

At times the story feels more like a crime noir novel than a traditional western. As soon as the sheriff has the boys in custody, the rancher and the banker (another of the boys' fathers) begin to bribe and intimidate witnesses. When it looks like that might fail, the rancher gathers his hands to help stage a jailbreak. The murder victim's brothers and friends, meanwhile, begin to threaten that justice will be done by any means necessary -- even if it results in "stringing up" the boys. Sheriff Wyatt has to try to keep a lid on the pressure cooker that the town becomes as the two sides get ready to go to war with each other.

The story is so tightly plotted that not a word is wasted. Every one of the sheriff's moves makes perfect sense, and even so the situation becomes more and more volatile, out of control, and potentially deadly. Adding to the complications for Sheriff Wyatt are the facts that one of the boys is the son of his deputy and the brother of his girlfriend. But he never wavers from trying to do his duty or to confront the violence that is relentlessly headed his way. The ending is fast and the resolution satisfying.