Customer Reviews

Street Fight in Tombstone, Near the O.K. Corral (The Street Fight Trilogy, Number 1)

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What happened on Oct. 26, 1881, when Wyatt Earp, his brothers and Doc Holliday walked down to confront the Ike Clanton, his brother and the McLaury brothers? It's something every 'Earp buff' would like to know. In this book, Hickey gives the 30 second blitz a shot-by-shot, who-stood-where, who-shot-who fresh new look. His conclusions are based on documents and written facts. In addition, he offers rare and recent unpublished photos and beautiful oil pantings which gives the reader an idea of what happened on Fremont Street those few and precious seconds.This is the first of three books in a trilogy series and no library should be without it!

There is one,and only one reason to look at this book: the illustrations. They are really quite good. But the narrative is flawed in the extreme.
The author has a real flair for misinterpreting the actual evidence and then coming to completly insupportable conclusions about the way the famous fight took place. For example: he contends that as the fight began Doc Holliday drew his "nickle plated" revolver and began blasting away with it--even though he was holding Virgil's Greener shotgun under his coat. Even the author admits that it was odd for Holliday to draw a pistol and begin shooting while holding a much deadlier weapon under his coat, in what had to be a very awkward position. But he dismisses all reasoning, testimony and criticism to the contrary by simply saying "...but that's what he did." Apparently Hickey thinks Holliday did such an unnatural and counter-intuitive thing for no better reason than to make his theory of the gunfight come out right. There are several other examples of the same sort of invalid reasoning throughout.
In short, there is no real insight in this book; the evidence is misstated, the reasoning is strained--to say the least--and the conclusions are clearly erroneous to anyone who has devoted any time at all to the study of the event. But the pictures are nice.

This book is a strange mishmash of other authors beliefs about the Gunfight at the Ok Corral mixed in with some really corny drivelings from the author (My God, where did we get such men?).

It's quite apparent that the author Hickey merely rewrote the works of Ben Traywick and therefore the works of Glenn Boyer.

Nothing original here, no primary research-all sources appear secondary.

The author also has a rather arrogant way of presenting himself to his readers which merely makes him less likeable.