The Lawyer: The Retributioners - Wayne D. Dundee

THE RETRIBUTIONERS is the second entry in the Lawyer series, created by Edward A. Grainger and written by Wayne D. Dundee. Like the first volume, STAY OF EXECUTION, this is a taut, gritty, well-written Western yarn.

The title character is J.D. Miller, a successful and respected attorney before the murders of his wife and children send him off on the vengeance trail to track down their killers. In THE RETRIBUTIONERS, Miller's search leads him to a small town in Texas just as a gang of bank robbers blow up the jail to rescue their leader who was captured in an unsuccessful raid a few days earlier. One of the men Miller is seeking is a member of the gang now, so there's no question that he'll go after them. He finds himself with an unexpected and somewhat unwanted ally in the person of the black former deputy who was the only lawman left alive in the settlement. Both of them are after retribution for those they've lost, hence the title.

Dundee's storyline alternates between The Lawyer and his temporary partner and the outlaws they're after, who still plan to return to the settlement and clean out the bank. There's plenty of hardboiled action, and the story just rockets by. The Lawyer is a compelling character, and his latest adventure makes for a fine tale. With luck it'll take him a while to track down all the men he's after, because that means we'll get more of these exciting tales to read. Highly recommended.

Hell Town Shootout - Edward A. Grainger (David Cranmer)

The dependably entertaining author Edward A. Grainger (aka the astute editor and publisher David Cranmer) returns with HELL TOWN SHOOTOUT, a new tale featuring Deputy U.S. Marshal Gideon Miles. Grainger plunges right into the action with this one, which finds Miles in the appropriately named settlement of Hell Town, Wyoming, to take a gang of bank robbers into custody. He finds himself ambushed instead and is forced to hole up in the local hotel with a dwindling supply of ammunition as the gang lays siege to the place. But even though he's outnumbered, outgunned, and faced with treachery within as well as a savage assault from outside, it never pays to underestimate Gideon Miles...

Grainger does a great job with the almost non-stop action of this tale, told in appropriately terse and tough prose, then elevates it to an even higher level with a lengthy epilogue that delves deeper into the character of Gideon Miles. Over the past few years, the Cash Laramie/Gideon Miles series by Grainger and several other authors has produced some of the best hardboiled Westerns being written today. HELL TOWN SHOOTOUT is a fine addition to the series. If you've read the others, you'll want to read this one, too, and if you haven't, HELL TOWN SHOOTOUT would serve as an excellent introduction. Highly recommended.

The Lawyer: Stay of Execution - Wayne D. Dundee

J.D. Miller was a practicing attorney in Louisiana, a good man with a wife and children. Then a mob raped and murdered his wife and killed his children, and Miller was transformed into a relentless gunman seeking vengeance on those who stole everything from him. Going by the name Smith and sporting a distinctive top hat, he was soon known as The Lawyer as he cut a bloody swath through the Old West.

The Lawyer made his debut in a short story of the same name by Edward A. Grainger, also known as David Cranmer, the publisher of Beat to a Pulp. That story (which is also included in this volume) featured Grainger's best known character, Deputy U.S. Marshal Cash Laramie. But The Lawyer proved to be compelling enough to merit his own series. The first entry, STAY OF EXECUTION, is by Wayne D. Dundee, one of the most prolific and acclaimed Western authors around these days.

This fast-moving yarn finds The Lawyer still on the trail of one of the men responsible for the tragedy that made him who he is, but he's sidetracked by the dilemma of a wounded farmer and the man's very pregnant wife. The farmer was shot by the very man The Lawyer is after, but instead of continuing the chase Smith gives in to the part of his humanity that's left and takes the pair to the nearest town for medical attention, where he promptly finds himself up to his gun in more trouble.

As with all of Dundee's work, there's a strong thread of compassion and melancholy in STAY OF EXECUTION, along with plenty of tough, gritty action. The Lawyer is a complex character, and in a genre that's full of vengeance-seeking protagonists, Dundee makes him fresh and interesting enough that I'm eager to read more about him. I hope this is just the first of many installments in the series. If you enjoy well-written hardboiled Westerns, it gets a strong recommendation from me.

New Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles

FURTHER ADVENTURES OF CASH LARAMIE AND GIDEON MILES, a new collection of stories from Edward A. Grainger (with an assist from Chuck Tyrell) is now available in both e-book and trade paperback editions. The earlier stories in this series are excellent, and I'm looking forward to reading this collection. In addition, the Cash Laramie novel THE GUNS OF VEDAUWOO by Wayne D. Dundee, previously available as an e-book, now has a trade paperback edition as well. If you haven't tried this series yet, either of these would be a fine place to start. Highly recommended.

The Guns of Vedauwoo - Wayne D. Dundee

U.S. Marshal Cash Laramie is sent out to locate a shipment of stolen guns in the Vedauwoo area of Wyoming where the rocky terrain is treacherous and enshrouded in mystical beauty. In his quest, Cash goes up against an amoral opportunist looking to stir up discord in the region by selling the weapons to a group of Native Americans.

I just read this one and thoroughly enjoyed it, which comes as no surprise since Wayne Dundee is one of the most reliable authors around. As usual, he supplies nice twists in the plot, well-drawn characters, and plenty of action. That's a nice cover, too. Highly recommended.

Another New Book: Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles are Back!

I haven't read this one (yet), but you can't go wrong with this series and Nik Morton is a fine writer. Check it out!

Adventures of Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles, Vol. II - Edward A. Grainger (David Cranmer)

The first volume of the ADVENTURES OF CASH LARAMIE AND GIDEON MILES was a fine collection of Western short stories, but Volume II is even better.  Cash Laramie, known as the Outlaw Marshal because of his willingness to bend the rules in order to achieve justice, dominates this collection, which leads off with "Origin of White Deer", the story of Cash's boyhood and how it shaped his later life.  There are six more stories in Volume II, some new and some previously published, and all of them good.  My favorites are the bizarre mystery "Cash Laramie and the Masked Devil" and the particularly bleak but very well-written "Reflections in a Glass of Maryland Rye".

Edward A. Grainger is, of course, David Cranmer, the mastermind of the BEAT TO A PULP website and anthologies, and he's making a well-deserved name for himself as one of the top new writers of Westerns.  If you enjoyed the first Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles collection, you'll definitely want this one, and if you haven't yet made the acquaintance of these two fine characters, Volume II is a great place to start.  Highly recommended.

Adventures of Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles - Edward A. Grainger (David Cranmer)

For a while now, David Cranmer has been writing stories under the name Edward A. Grainger about Deputy U.S. Marshal Cash Laramie (sometimes known as The Outlaw Marshal because of his tendency to break the rules to accomplish justice) and his fellow deputy and sometimes partner Gideon Miles. Cash was raised by Indians and Gideon is black, so both of them are to a certain extent outsiders in frontier society, but that doesn’t prevent them from doing their jobs.


ADVENTURES OF CASH LARAMIE AND GIDEON MILES is a new e-book collecting seven of the stories about these characters, five of them reprints from various venues and two appearing here for the first time. They’re all tightly-plotted, well-written yarns, traditional Westerns for the most part but with some extra grit and edgy plots. One of them, “The Bone Orchard Mystery” (a story new to this volume), is just what it sounds like, a fine mystery story centered around a graveyard, and it’s probably my favorite entry in the book.


But all the stories are well worth reading. If you’re a Western fan and haven’t yet made the acquaintance of Cash and Gideon, you definitely should, and this volume is a perfect introduction.


By the way, there’ll be a new Gideon Miles story in the Western Fictioneers anthology to be published later this summer. One more good reason to keep an eye out for that one!