Opening paragraphs.................................

The Peacemaker Colt has now been in production, without change in design, for a century.  Buy one today and it would be indistinguishable from the one Wyatt Earp wore when he was the Marshal of Dodge City.  It is the oldest hand gun in the world, without question the most famous and, if efficiency in its designated task of maiming and killing be taken as criterion of its worth, then it is also probably the best hand gun ever made.  It is no light thing, it is true, to be wounded by some of the Peacemaker's more highly esteemed competitors, such as the Luger or Mauser:  but the high-velocity, narrow-calibre, steel-cased shell from either of those just goes straight through you, leaving a small neat hole in its wake and spending the bulk of its energy on the distant landscape whereas the large and unjacketed soft-nosed lead bullet from the Colt mushrooms on impact, tearing and smashing bone and muscle and tissue as it goes and expending all its energy on you.
-Alistair MacLean,  When Eight Bells Toll (1966)