The Durango Kid rides again in Lightning Guns. As ever, the masked Durango (alias Steve Brandon) is played by Charles Starrett, who this time around is on the trail of a gang of cold-blooded killers. Rancher Dan Saunders (Edgar Dearing) is held responsible for the killings because of his opposition to a politically expedient dam project. Durango believes that Saunders is innocent, and he intends to prove it.

Having served a prison sentence for robbery, Pete Carver decides to go back for the hidden loot. But someone is on his trail.

Recently returned from WWII combat, unable to find a job, finding his sweetheart engaged to another man, and generally aware of the changes which have occurred in his hometown while he was away, a young man becomes easily talked into joining the Ku Klux Klan. Banned by the Virginia Board of Censors, and financed independently because no bank would loan money for it.

One of the five sci-fi's I remember every single detail of from my earliest days as a fan. For the genre, I think it's considerably above average. The moor is nicely atmospheric. There's one of every character in the book: the good guy, the bad guy, the local sheriff, the lovely damsel, her father the old professor, etc. The scene where we're looking for the first time through the window of the ship and the visitor peeks out from the other side is easily as good as the three-fingered-hand-on-the-shoulder in War of the Worlds. Nice "character" to the visitor, for whom, like Karloff's Frankenstein, we end up feeling some empathy .