Westport's Tarnished Star: In Defense of Johnny Behan--First Sheriff of Cochise County Paperback – October 28, 2019

Wonderful, thoughtful, well researched, and well written book. Ms. Gray brings Sheriff Johnny Behan to life. His story is fascinating and from the first few words written by this brillIant author I was hooked. The fact that Ms. Gray spent time with Johnny's descendants, listened to their stories, and thoughtfully retold them as if Johnny were speaking, makes the book even more exciting and relatable. This book lets the reader see and experience the old west in an honest and true account of Sheriff Behan's life. This is a book which everyone, who is interested in history or not, must read. OUTSTANDING!

Don't waste your money on this book, as I did. Written in first person prose, it is a cry-baby attempt to prove Johnny Behan was some kind of unbelievable "Superman". Maybe a good Fairy Tale, but several sources would be able to disprove most of this "Book".

Loved it. The truth behind the Hollywood flash. A journey of history and discovery that brings you right into wild west and past all the Hollywood flash and misconceptions. The story of a true hero. The author has a readable style of writing that, along with her extensive research and devotion to the facts, draws you in and keeps you reading. I look forward to reading it again.

Unfortunately I purchased this book thinking it was a traditional 3rd person, fully sourced and footnoted, biography. It is not. The author assumed the identity of John H. Behan and writes in the first person, thereby rending this a fictional work. Behan left no letters or memoirs or personal accounts of his own life. The author takes over the identity of Behan and provides her own personal thoughts and imaginative motivations and dialogue and represents them as those of Behan. This makes the entire book a work of fiction based on fact. (A novel) This was not made clear in the summary of the book and if it had been I would not have purchased it. Apart from that, it suffers greatly from a purely academic perspective, as typing errors abound. Some chapters have titles, some don't. One chapter has an obvious typing error as a title. The author even has Morgan Earp riding in a posse that accompanied Virgil and Allie to Contention City, when in the previous sentence she has Morgan's dead body in a hearse. There are many more typing errors. Curiously the book suddenly ends with only 6 pages covering the last 12 years of Behan's life. This is actually a blessing. Poorly written and misrepresented.