User Reviews

Bret helps Mary Shane, who supposedly died several days before. She is the "ghost rider." She leaves Bret and the buggy and disappears with Bret's coat and his $1000 bill pinned inside. Bret finds his coat and his money in a cemetery, and there is a gravestone with Mary's name on it. Bret calls on the undertaker, who was engaged to marry Mary. Bret follows him and is led to a rockslide. The undertaker is killed, and Bret is blamed. Lots of suspense and mystery! Bret returns to the rockslide to find Mary rummaging through the rocks. "The Kid" who robs Bret and is killed for cheating is Edd Byrnes. Kookie Byrnes starred in 77 Sunset Strip.

Intriguing premise-- Maverick rides off with a girl who in turn disappears, only to find out she's been dead a week! So, what's going on. Edd "Kookie" Byrnes gets a bit role as a youthful stick- up man that sets off the odd chain of events. Along the way, there's an unusual number of mocking jibes at small towns and the lack of excitement. Of course, with Maverick in town the pace does pick up. Then, when mysterious stranger Rhodes Reason shows up to give Bret an assist, things get more interesting.

These early episodes were pretty cheaply produced. Here the action appears confined to the back-lot, along with an obvious outdoor set scene. As long as the action doesn't flag, these limitations don't much matter. But in those entries that do sometimes drag, the limitations can become obtrusive. The Maverick character is still pretty undefined, appearing again as something of an itinerant drifter. Nonetheless, his trademark black dress coat with silk vest does make an early appearance, along with the rainy-day thousand dollar bill. Too bad that the solution to the mystery-- in my view at least-- doesn't match the intriguing build-up, but still an entertaining entry.

This Maverick story has James Garner robbed by none other than the future parking attendant on Sunset Boulevard, Gerald Lloyd Kookson,III known to one and all as Kookie. Edd Byrnes relieves Garner of $3000.00 in poker winnings and slugs him.

Garner trails him across the territory and arrives in a town just in time to see Byrnes killed in a poker dispute. Then he runs into pretty Joanna Barnes whom he drives home in a buggy only she disappears in the dark with the rest of Garner's money. As he learns she died about a week before he arrived in town.

I can't tell any of the rest because it's quite a tale and quite a jackpot Maverick gets himself in when another murder occurs. Needless to say Barnes is a ghost with a pulse.