Mississippi Raider (A Dusty Fog's Civil War Book 1)

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MISSISSIPPI RAIDER
Comanche is traditionally listed as the first book in the series but as it takes place entirely before the start of the war the publishers have discounted it and begin Dusty Fog's Civil War with Mississippi Raider. This is an adventure starring Belle Boyd not Dusty Fog ...

She came out of the Louisiana bayou, a hard-riding young beauty who had seen her parents killed in cold blood by agents from the North. Driven by her desire for revenge, Belle joined the Great Cause. That took her into the heart of a nation cleaved in two, and closer to her parents’ killers. Joining the Secret Service of the Confederacy, she pitted her courage, wits and fighting skills against the Union’s best agents. But while she spawned a legend with her daring escapades and undercover work, her greatest challenge still lay ahead, on a mission deep behind enemy lines – to stop a deadly new weapon from entering the war!


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Thomas Edson was born at Worksop, Nottinghamshire, on February 17 1928, the son of a miner who was killed in an accident when John was nine. He left Shirebrook Selective Central School at 14 to work in a stone quarry and joined the Army four years later.

As a sergeant in the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, Edson served in Kenya during the Emergency, on one occasion killing five Mau Mau on patrol. He started writing in Hong Kong, and when he won a large cash prize in a tombola he invested in a typewriter.

On coming out of the Army after 12 years with a wife and children to support, Edson learned his craft while running a fish-and-chip shop and working on the production line at a local pet food factory. His efforts paid off when Trail Boss (1961) won second prize in a competition with a promise of publication and an outright payment of £50.

The publishers offered £25 more for each subsequent book, and with the addition of earnings from serial-writing for the comic Victor, Edson was able to settle down to professional authorship. When the comic's owners decided that nobody read cowboy stories any more, he was forced to get a job as a postman (the job had the by-product of enabling him to lose six stone in weight from his original 18).

Edson's prospects improved when Corgi Books took over his publisher, encouraged him to produce seven books a year and promised him royalties for the first time. In 1974 he made his first visit to the United States, to which he was to return regularly in search of reference books. He declared that he had no desire to live in the Wild West, adding: "I've never even been on a horse. I've seen those things, and they look highly dangerous at both ends and bloody uncomfortable in the middle. My only contact was to shoot them for dog meat."

His heroes were often based on his favourite film stars, so that Dusty Fog resembled Audie Murphy, and the Ysabel Kid was an amalgam of Elvis Presley in Flaming Star and Jack Buetel in The Outlaw.

Before becoming a recluse in his last years, JT's favourite boast was that Melton Mowbray was famous for three things: "The pie, Stilton cheese and myself but not necessarily in that order."