Customer Reviews

Johnny Ringo: Unknown Destiny

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I really liked this book. Ringo is presented as a complex character with both good and bad qualities. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday are pretty much painted the same way. It's not often that you see the Gunfight at the OK Corral unfold as anything but a tribute to Earp. This author did a good job of describing the events in an even handed manner. Before finishing the book, I found myself identifying strongly with Ringo. This is a good story. I've recommended it to several of my friends and they liked it as well.

My wife and I read this book and we both liked it. I bought it at a book signing in San Angelo. I consider myself pretty knowledgeable on Ringo; he was in the Mason County War in Texas near here. At the book signing McCord seemed to know a lot about Ringo. I'd say he did his homework. The book is a novel, and the author did put his own twist on it. We thought it was a good read.

I loved this book. I'm a great fan of books on the gunfighters of old west. This one did not disappoint me. You can't help but fall in love with Ringo. There is a part of this story about a lady named Melinda that is most exciting adventure I have read ever in a book.

Wow...this book has it all, gunfights, rustlers, beautiful cowgirls, you name it.

By the way, another reviewer said he was Doc Holliday and claimed to have shot Ringo. Not likely, Ringo's wound wasn't in the back. T Ringo

This is a good novel. I repeat novel. There's some fiction for sure. I like Tombstone history, but have never liked the accounts that present Wyatt Earp to be some sort of hero. This book takes a more even keel on the two men. Ringo was Earp's main adversary and has often been cast as some sort or outlaw. He was not an outlaw. Some of the Ringo clan are friends of mine and particularly hated the movie Tombstone, which had Ringo as some sort of drunk who shot a priest. There is nothing to indicate he would have ever done anything like that.

This book presents Ringo as a likeable guy who happened to be very fast with a gun. When Ringo drank he got into trouble. That's the way I understand that he actually was and that's the way this book presents him. After I read this book I told a couple of my friends who are in the Ringo family about it. They really liked this characterization of him.

I thought it was an exciting story. The reviewer below who says you can't help but fall in love with Ringo is right. It has a little different take on what happened to him. I really liked the story.

I purchased this book under the mistaken assumption that it was a historical novel based upon the known life of John Peters Ringo (especially since the blurbs promoting this book sited the outstanding biography of Ringo written by David Johnson). The book is in fact a very old fashioned western tacked onto the persona of a famous character. The book is 437 pages long but only the first 106 pages actually deal in a context of historical fact. The majority of the book is actually a totally fictional story wherein the lead character is mostly known by the name of Tom Colt and which stands totally independent of the factual life of John Ringo. The story of Colt is over 330 pages long and is a pretty old school type of tale wherein right is right and prevails in the end after many travails.

The plotting and dialogue would feel very comfortable in the pages of any of the old western pulps that were published into the 1950's. In fact a lot of the tale in so couched in Saturday afternoon matinee clichés that it is discomforting. This is even giving allowance for the embarrassingly out of place sexual scenes inserted into the text as, I assume, a sop to modern tastes.

The overall book seems to me to be pretty long for the story that is told and could have used some tightening from an editor. A lot the length is made up of descriptive scenic passages and a lot of "he said, they said" dialogue but may very well appeal to persons who prefer this type of writing to more action oriented verbiage. There are a couple of very strange sequences involving visions of angels that never seem to be explained. However my biggest complaint about the book is that it is flying under "false colors". I had expected one thing but was delivered another. Mr. McCord obviously has the right to write a book based upon his conjectures, but I would have liked to have been warned that the story I was about to read had only the slightest relationship to the historical Ringo and is, in fact, a strictly fictional western ranch romance novel. While being a "tombstone" buff, this is not the type of book I would have purchased or read if I had known. I am sure that this book has its audience, but one needs a better frame of reference than is offered to determine the nature and direction of this book.

You think your buying a great book about him, instead you don't. You don't get the early part of his life and or the later either. It's just a way to throw your $$$$$$ down the drain

it's hard for me to rate this book in full, since I was the one who really shot Ringo. Signed. J.H. (Doc) Holliday