Some time after the Civil War, some English jackass named Lord Veldon gets the insane idea of moving an entire English castle, stone by stone, to the American desert, where it was rebuilt near the Broken Hills, known to be a den of thieves, gets a bunch of guards to dress like Medieval knights but with long-range guns and refuses to deposit whatever treasure he's got in the bank. A couple of scientists go to investigate the castle and mysteriously disappear, and a "brown butterball" with a $20,000 bounty on his head named Bandera has something to do with it.
The Man with No Name- Manco, Joe, Blondie, whatever you may call him, goes in to investigate, too, and while at the tavern closest to Veldon Castle he runs into one Saginaw Kirp, life insurance agent and another Lee Van Cleef lookalike. Kirp is not the peaceful life insurance agent he makes himself out to be. He's described exactly the same as Shadrach except without the scar. They have a distinctive "wedge shaped" face and everything. They even both wear frock coats!
However, unlike in A Coffin Full of Dollars, Millard doesn't make any clever remark about the fact that Lee Van Cleef has turned up in two of Sergio Leone's movies in different roles.
Joe and Kirp get a lead on Bandera when they meet a cagey reporter who claimed to have interviewed him. They go and check out the bandit chief's hideout and what follows is a loose retread of Joe/Manco and Shadrach's discovery of Apachito's hideout in A Coffin Full of Dollars, only with scientists in captivity, and Bandera's men making copies of the armor (but bulletproof, unlike the armor at Veldon Castle) and a greasewood powered wagon to storm Veldon Castle with.
Meanwhile a petty thief named Jingles goes west to sneak into Veldon Castle. I enjoyed his subplot. He was a fun little rascal, even though he did distract from the story a bit.
This one has the same problem as in the last one I read: The Man with No Name talks too much. Was it so hard just to write his inner monologue, just as thoughts? Also, he rarely loses his temper and when it does it comes out in a terrifying slow burn. He never raises his voice. Millard should have made note of that. Either that or he was really good at pushing Joe past his limit.
Bandera, real name Juliano Bandera Mescato, is described in the exact vague manner as his counterpart Apachito: squat, swarthy and with a "guttural" voice. Any other details he would have cared to share? Apachito in A Coffin Full of Dollars is said to have the "unmistakable stamp of Indian blood on his features". Bandera's face is only "broad". "Broad" is still no help.
We do get to know more about Bandera than we do about Apachito, including how he found his hiding place, and a little bit of his backstory.
He's not as entertaining as Apachito, but he livens up the story, even though he's a one-note villain in the vein of Gold Hat from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Sometimes Millard writes his accent phonetically, but most of the time he forgets to.
By the way, I like how his middle name means "flag". Very lofty.
And as it turned out, Kirp, who is a former Confederate officer, knew "Bandy" from the Civil War days. What are the odds?
The book jumps back and forth in time quite a bit which got me a little confused at times.
Everyone squawls a lot. There is an awful lot of squawling.
There's a really liberal use of the word "cute" as an insult. (Mind you, the word "liberal" is an insult in itself, too, so I've heard)
And a crazy final battle in the courtyard of Veldon Castle.
This, like the other licensed "Dollars Trilogy" fanfictions, was rushed out to cash in on the movies and therefore doesn't feel like a story that the Man with No Name belongs in.
Still, this is one wild story. It's kind of fantastical. If you're into that sort of thing.
Cowboys and knights. I never thought of those two elements going together.
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