Leo W. Banks is the author of two critically acclaimed thrillers featuring former professional baseball player turned trailer park owner Whip Stark, DOUBLE WIDE and CHAMPAGNE COWBOYS, and a stand-alone about politics, crime, and corruption called ,45-CALIBER PERFUME. All of them are set in Arizona, as is his fourth novel THE FLYING Z, which also happens to be the first book I’ve read by Banks.
As you might or might not guess from the title, the Flying Z is the name of a
ranch. Specifically, a ranch not far above the Arizona/Mexico border which has
been home to the Zachary family for generations. Will Zachary and his uncle
Buck, along with a colorful cast of friends and employees, are trying to keep
it going despite a bad economy and the growing encroachments of drug smugglers working
for the Mexican cartels. Then one day, a beautiful young grad student driving
across the country to Stanford decides to follow an Arizona dirt road looking
for a brief adventure and finds much more than she bargained for, turning Will
Zachary’s life upside down in the process.
That’s the set-up. So what does THE FLYING Z turn into from there? Is it a
romance? Well, not exactly, although the love story between Will Zachary and
Merry O’Hara is at the heart of it and is handled with skill and sensitivity.
Is it a modern-day Western? That’s a little closer, since there’s plenty of
ridin’ and shootin’ and cowboyin’. Is it a crime thriller? I suppose, since
Will’s violent clashes with the cartel and uncovering the identity of a
murderer all play important parts in the plot. Or is it maybe a fantasy, since
some things that have no reasonable explanation are crucial to how everything
turns out? In a lot of scenes where Banks is writing about life on the ranch
and in the nearby small town, THE FLYING Z reads very much like a mainstream literary
novel because of his deft touch with character, setting, and dialogue.
I don’t know, and with some books, such questions are more for marketing
purposes than anything else. I can tell you what I think THE FLYING Z is.
It's one of the best books I’ve read this year. You should read it. It's available in paperback and e-book editions.
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