http://nhw.livejournal.com/825455.html

Donald Cotton's novelisation of The Gunfighters is, I think justly, acknowledged as one of the great Target novelisations. It takers the basic theme of the televised story, but messes around immensely with the actual plot and details, especially in the last episode. The story is told in flashback, the dying Doc Holliday recounting events to Ned Buntline. The whole thing is done in a brilliant pastiche of Western idiom, and it is very entertaining. (Though I am in the very small minority in fandom who actually enjoyed the "Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon", a song linking scenes of the TV version which is of course dropped from the novel.)

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1998635.html

I'm glad to report that it stands up to re-reading; Cotton tells it in the character of journalist Ned Buntline, reporting Doc Holliday's account of events many years after the fact, and presents what is actually a fairly close mapping of the original script (including the "Doctor Who?" joke) in a passable pastiche of the appropriate style. It's funnier than the original, with some fairly minor characters given actual personalities - Johnny Ringo's fascination with classic literature, Phineas Clancy's desperate attempts at appropriate metaphors involving animals. On the other hand, there's almost no characterisation for the three regular characters, the exception being, oddly enough, Dodo, of whom we discover that "she had learned all about poker at her finishing school". Here, the Doctor actually atrts the OK Corral shootout by accident (in the original he is far fom the scene). I wrongly reported in my previous write-up that the "Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon" is omitted; it is all here, in fact, and that's fine with me. ( )