Review: Rough Riders of the Ragged Rimrock - James J. Griffin

I think James J. Griffin has written more novels about the Texas Rangers than anyone since A. Leslie Scott, who must hold the record for the most novels featuring a Texas Ranger as the hero. But for more than twenty years, Griffin has also been spinning action-packed yarns about the Rangers starring several different protagonists.

One of his recent books, ROUGH RIDERS OF THE RAGGED RIMROCK (I love that title) stars veteran Ranger Will Kirkpatrick and his young sidekick Jonas Peterson. This isn’t the first novel featuring these characters, although it’s the first one I’ve read, but Griffin does a good job filling in their backgrounds: Jonas is actually a probationary Ranger in Kirkpatrick’s custody, who arrested him for taking part in a robbery, even though it was Jonas’s outlaw cousins who forced him into it. Will believes in second chances, so now he and Jonas ride on the same side of the law and cover a broad swath of West Texas and the Panhandle as they try to bring law and order to the Lone Star State.

ROUGH RIDERS OF THE RAGGED RIMROCK actually comes across as something of a frontier law enforcement procedural as Will and Jonas deal with several cases involving bank robberies, stagecoach holdups, crooked local lawmen, and a cattle baron and his sons who believe they’re above the law. For a while, Jonas operates on his own while Will is recovering from a bullet wound, and he acquits himself admirably before the Rangers team up again to track down a gang of stagecoach robbers who murder all the passengers when they pull a job, so as not to leave any witnesses behind.

Griffin’s passion for writing action-packed traditional Western novels really comes through in this tale, and his knowledge of horses, the landscape, and frontier life lends it a definite air of authenticity without sacrificing a bit of a mythic quality, too. I enjoyed ROUGH RIDERS OF THE RAGGED RIMROCK, but fair warning, it does end on sort of a cliffhanger. But I already have the next book in the series on my Kindle, so no problem there. If you’re already a fan you’ll want to read this one, and if you haven’t sampled Griffin’s work before, it wouldn’t be a bad place to start. It's available on Amazon in e-book and trade paperback editions.