Elmore Leonard

The wife of a corrupt real estate developer is kidnapped by two common criminals, who intend to extort him with inside information about his crooked business and off-shore accounts. But the husband decides he'd actually rather not pay the ransom to get back his wife, setting off an unbelievable sequence of double crosses and twists.

Joe Kidd, which concerns a land war in New Mexico at the turn of the century, marks Clint Eastwood at the top of his form as a western hero. Like a very classic western, it has gunfights, conflicts, and a slambang finale which has a locomotive being driven through a saloon where the bad guys are hiding.

As other volunteers quit or are killed, a rancher is left alone to deal with the responsibility of putting a captured outlaw aboard a Fort Yuma-bound train.