A Pistol in Greenyards confirms the view that, though Mollie Hunter falls short of the magic by which a [Rosemary] Sutcliff or a [Winifred] Bryher turns the raw stuff of history into imaginative gold, she is a fine story-teller, able to shape a plot without loss of historical integrity…. In the story of the short, doomed resistance of one township, and of a boy's fight against a vicious legal system that has his mother in its grip and is reaching out for his own life, the author has given the theme a spring and elation, a narrative excitement, that make this a book to recommend to two kinds of reader. It will thrill the young historian: and history will rub off from it on the reader who believes he is concerned only with being thrilled.

"Making the Most of Their Time," in The Times Literary Supplement (© Times Newspapers...