Monday, July 31, 2023

The Death's Head Tavern: A Solomon Kane Story - Nancy A. Collins


I’ve been aware of Nancy A. Collins and her work for many years, but I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by her until now. She was a member of REHupa, the Robert E. Howard United Press Association, for a while (as was I), and she recently rewrote and expanded a Solomon Kane short story she wrote originally for her REHupa ’zine. THE DEATH’S HEAD TAVERN: A SOLOMON KANE STORY is now available as an e-book with a good cover on Amazon.

The story finds Howard’s Puritan adventurer Solomon Kane stopping at an isolated tavern at the edge of a Scottish moor. As we all know, nothing good ever happens on a moor. (“They were the footprints, Mr. Holmes, of a gigantic hound!”) The tavern’s only other customers are a traveling merchant and his beautiful daughter. Kane is looking for a former comrade-in-arms who disappeared in the area while searching for his missing brother. With two men missing, something sinister is definitely going on, and in a night of violence, fire, and gruesome death, Kane discovers what it is.

Collins does a fine job of capturing Howard’s character and the story moves right along at a very nice pace. The action scenes are excellent. One thing I really like is the way Collins ties this Solomon Kane yarn in with another of Howard’s series. You’ll have to read it to find out which one, but it works really well. There’s a reference to another literary property not by Howard that I appreciated, too.

THE DEATH’S HEAD TAVERN is just a good story, a Front Porch Yarn, and I enjoyed it a lot. If Collins wants to wrote more Solomon Kane stories, I’ll read them, that’s for sure.

No comments: