Passion Web - William Kane (Ben Haas)

Years ago I owned a copy of this book, but I never got around to reading it before it was lost in the Fire of ’08. At that time, I had no idea who William Kane was, although I figured it was a pseudonym. I just bought all the Pillar/Ember/Nightstand/etc. books that I came across, especially if they were a reasonable price. I believe I paid a buck for that copy.

Time passed, and I never replaced that lost copy of PASSION WEB. Then I found out that none other than the great Western and adventure novelist Ben Haas wrote most of those William Kane books, including PASSION WEB. I’ve been on the lookout for an affordable copy ever since and came across one recently. I read it within a few days of getting it. Not going to miss out this time!

The cover by Robert Bonfils makes this look like a Western, and it sort of is a contemporary (1964) Western, set mostly on a dude ranch in West Texas and in the nearby small town. The protagonist is Lois Frost, a beautiful, ambitious young secretary at an oil company who has been promised a promotion to an executive job if she can weasel some vital information out of geologist Kirk Parsons, who works for a rival oil company. Lois is willing to do the job no matter what it takes, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. The dude ranch where Lois stays while pursuing her goal is owned by beautiful Tess Welch, who struggles not only to keep the ranch going but to control her burgeoning feelings for Lois. The neighboring ranch is owned by champion bronc rider Clint Sandifer, who has a violent streak, a fondness for whips, and a hankering for beautiful young Maria Galindez, who’s married to one of Clint’s ranch hands.

Most of the book is taken up by Haas’s skillful mixing and matching of those characters, plus a mystery of sorts over the location of a fabulously valuable pool of oil, before everything comes to a head at a rodeo. (Where else?) His smooth prose is a joy to read, as always, and keeps things moving along at such a fast pace that I raced through the book and enjoyed it quite a bit. There are a lot of sex scenes and they’re fairly graphic, but they’re well-written and actually have to do with the plot most of the time. Not only that, but there are several scenes of unexpected violence that would be right at home in one of Haas’s adventure novels, and his descriptions of the West Texas landscape are excellent. He’s just one of those writers whose work really resonates with me, no matter what the genre.

So I’m glad I finally got my hands on another copy of PASSION WEB. I really had a good time reading it. I found another William Kane book that wasn’t too pricey for my taste and ordered it. I figure I’ll enjoy it, too.