The Axeman of Storyville - Heath Lowrance

Gideon Miles is back in THE AXEMAN OF STORYVILLE, but he's not a deputy U.S. marshal in the Old West anymore. It's the early 1920s, and Gideon, now in his sixties, owns a jazz club in New Orleans along with his wife Violet. It's a peaceful, pleasant existence, especially after the action-packed life Gideon has led, but it's about to be disrupted by an axe-wielding serial killer.

Heath Lowrance, who previously authored the Gideon Miles Western novella MILES TO LITTLE RIDGE, does his usual great job with this story, which is more reminiscent of a hardboiled private eye yarn than it is a Western. Gideon isn't a licensed private investigator, of course, but he's pressured to take on the job of tracking down the sinister Axeman of Storyville anyway, his "client" being a powerful member of the Black Hand (the forerunner of the Mafia) who has a finger in most of what goes on in the French Quarter.

Lowrance captures the setting and the time period quite well, and despite Gideon's age he's still a tough, likable protagonist. The supporting cast is excellent, especially Gideon's young assistant, and the plot moves along at a fast pace. There's one late twist I didn't expect, and that's always a good thing. Overall, THE AXEMAN OF STORYVILLE is a really entertaining tale, and if you've read the previous entries in the Cash Laramie/Gideon Miles series, you'll certainly want to read this one. If you're a fan of hardboiled crime fiction you should check it out, too, even if you haven't read the earlier entries. I had a great time reading it.

Bad Sanctuary - Heath Lowrance

"Bad Sanctuary" is the latest short story from Heath Lowrance featuring Hawthorne, his scarred and haunted gunslinger/bounty hunter/avenging angel. In this one he's tracking down a killer to an abandoned army fort that's been turned into a refuge for outlaws and other men on the run, but there's another evil lurking there, too, and it's really what Hawthorne is after.

This is a truly creepy story, and the odds against Hawthorne are so high at one point you have to wonder how he's going to come out of it alive. There's plenty of bloody action, and also a few tantalizing hints about Hawthorne's background. Lowrance is doing a masterful job with this series, and I always look forward to the new entries. If you're a fan of the so-called Weird Western and haven't read the Hawthorne stories yet, you really need to. Go back to the first one, "That Damned Coyote Hill" and read them in order.

Of course, if you're a fan, no doubt you already have "Bad Sanctuary". If you don't, grab it right away. It's great stuff, as always.

The Spider Tribe - Heath Lowrance

Hawthorne, the mysterious gunfighter with the cross-shaped scar on his forehead, returns in Heath Lowrance's "The Spider Tribe", and he runs right into the sort of creepy menace that makes the Weird Western genre so much fun.

This time Hawthorne finds a Lakota Sioux village where a massacre has taken place, but the killers aren't the U.S. cavalry as he first assumes. An ancient evil is responsible for wiping out the village, as he discovers when he joins forces with two young survivors to go after the culprits.

As usual in these stories, there's plenty of well-written action, an unrelenting pace, and a palpable sense of lurking evil. Hawthorne is a fine character. Lowrance hasn't told us much about him yet, but I'm sure he will in the future.

"That Damned Coyote Hill" and "The Long Black Train" are the first two yarns in this series, and if you haven't read them yet, you should, even though the stories stand alone. "The Spider Tribe" continues what is fast becoming a tradition of excellence. Highly recommended.

Fight Card: Bluff City Brawler - Jack Tunney (Heath Lowrance)

 The Fight Card series just keeps rolling along in spectacular fashion. The latest entry is BLUFF CITY BRAWLER, by Heath Lowrance writing under the house-name Jack Tunney. It's the story of boxer Tom Riley, who gets in trouble with the mob in Detroit and is forced to run for his life, winding up in Memphis. Tom settles in to his new life there, makes friends, meets a nice girl he falls for . . . but you just know that old trouble from Detroit is going to catch up to him sooner or later.

Since Heath Lowrance is one of my favorite newer authors (he's not brand-new with two novels, several novellas, and a bunch of short stories out there, all of them fine work), I expected a rousing good yarn and BLUFF CITY BRAWLER doesn't disappoint. Lowrance captures the 1950s era quite well. I especially liked the mention of Jo Stafford, a long-time favorite of mine. And the action hardly ever lets up, as well, with a number of gritty, well-done fight scenes. I read this one in a single evening, which is extremely rare for me these days. If you're a fight fan or just a fan of top-notch hardboiled fiction, BLUFF CITY BRAWLER gets a high recommendation from me.

Speaking of Jo Stafford, why not close with the iconic song Heath mentions in the story:

Now Available: City of Heretics - Heath Lowrance

City of Heretics is a crime novel about an aging con named Crowe, just out of prison and back in Memphis, ready for some payback against the criminals who got him sent up.

Before Crowe can enjoy his revenge he has to track down a brutal murderer cutting a swath through the city—ultimately leading Crowe to confront a bizarre secret society of serial killers masquerading as a Christian splinter-group.

In his second novel CITY OF HERETICS, Heath Lowrance spins as fine a hardboiled crime yarn as I've read in a long time. With a complex plot and compelling characters, it's as gritty as the sleet that falls on the streets of Memphis in the winter, and just as slick and dangerous. Lowrance's debut novel THE BASTARD HAND is already a cult classic, and CITY OF HERETICS is even better.

(Yes, I'm getting blog mileage out of the blurb I gave Heath for this book. CITY OF HERETICS is really, really good, though, and if you like hardboiled fiction you need to read it. I think it'll be a strong contender for my best of the year list in a few months.)

Hawthorne: The Long Black Train - Heath Lowrance

One of the most entertaining things I read last year was THAT DAMNED COYOTE HILL, Heath Lowrance's first supernatural Western story featuring the mysterious scarred gunfighter known as Hawthorne. Now Hawthorne is back in THE LONG BLACK TRAIN, the second story in the series, which I hope has settled down for a long run in David Cranmer's Beat to a Pulp publishing empire.

Hawthorne is a bounty hunter – sort of – and this story finds him on the trail of a man who murdered his sister-in-law when she tried to shield his runaway wife. That trail leads Hawthorne to a train making a nighttime run from Denver to Santa Fe, but as Hawthorne soon discovers, something even worse than his quarry is on that train. Much worse.

THE LONG BLACK TRAIN is gruesome, occasionally funny in a bizarre way, packed with action, and very well-written. In the space of a year or so, Heath Lowrance has become one of my favorite authors. If you enjoy Westerns with a supernatural touch, you definitely need to check out the Hawthorne series. I'm already eager to read the next one.

"Miles to Little Ridge" - Heath Lowrance

David Cranmer shows a lot of confidence in turning over his popular characters, deputy U.S. marshals Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles, to other authors. Based on the first entry in this new series, that confidence is not misplaced.

Heath Lowrance's novelette "Miles to Little Ridge" is a solo Gideon Miles story that finds the black deputy marshal arriving in the small town of Little Ridge to arrest a fugitive. When he gets there, though, Miles discovers that in the three years the wanted robber has been living in Little Ridge, the man has become a respected member of the community. Naturally there are people who don't want Miles to arrest him.

As if that's not enough for Miles to deal with, an old enemy of his happens to be in Little Ridge, and as soon as he lays eyes on the deputy marshal, he decides that it's time for him to have his revenge.

Lowrance combines these elements into a fine traditional Western yarn. Not surprisingly, it's very well written, with good action scenes and interesting characters. With its somewhat downbeat ending, "Miles to Little Ridge" reminds me of the work of H.A. DeRosso, and you don't get much better than that.

I'm very pleased that authors such as Cranmer, Lowrance, and Wayne Dundee are getting people to read Westerns who never tried one before. As you know, I'm a strong supporter of the genre and think that it's far from dead. In fact, I think it's going to be around for a long time to come. If you're already a Western fan or just want to try one, you definitely should check out "Miles to Little Ridge".

"Deadland USA: Ballroom Blitz" - Heath Lowrance

This is the second story in Heath Lowrance's new zombie series, and it's just as entertaining as the first. Flashing back to the night the so-called zombie apocalypse started for the narrator Sammy, it features the same highly appealing voice, the moments of pathos and humor, and the frantic action. Plus it ends on a cliffhanger. Bring on the next installment, I say.

"That Damned Coyote Hill"/"Deadland, USA: Mindless Consumerism" - Heath Lowrance

Heath Lowrance's debut novel THE BASTARD HAND is one of the best books I've read so far this year, so I had high hopes for a couple of his short stories I read recently, "That Damned Coyote Hill" and "Deadland, USA: Mindless Consumerism", both of which are available as e-books on Amazon.

"That Damned Coyote Hill" is a Weird Western, a crossover genre that's a lot older than some people think ("The Horror From the Mound", anyone?), but it's enjoying a well-deserved resurgence right now. Some of the new stories I've read have suffered from being unbalanced: the horror elements are strong and done well, but the Western elements aren't, or vice versa. Lowrance, however, does a fine job with both. You've got a mysterious gunfighter on a mission of vengeance, an isolated settlement, a trio of fairly formidable bad guys, a kidnapped little girl . . . but you've also got an even more mysterious old Indian, townspeople who don't act quite right, strange creatures that haunt the prairie . . . mix that together and you have a very entertaining yarn that's an excellent example of the Weird Western. I'm hoping that Lowrance's protagonist in this story, the gunfighter called Hawthorne (named after Nathaniel Hawthorne, perhaps?) will soon make a return appearance.

Not having read a lot of zombie fiction and written even less (one unsold novelette that's now lost), I hardly qualify as an expert on that genre, but it seems to me that zombie fiction can be viewed as an oddball variation of the old "man vs. nature" plot, only in this case it would be the "man vs. unnature" plot. But a horde of hungry zombies is as much a vast, inexorable threat as a flood, a forest fire, or an earthquake. You can't really identify with them, they have no back-story (or rather, they have so many back-stories that it's too unwieldy to deal with them), and so the writer has to focus on their potential victims, as Steven Booth and Harry Shannon do so well in THE HUNGRY, which I blogged about a few days ago.

"Deadland, USA: Mindless Consumerism" is definitely the first in a series, and Lowrance makes it work by giving us a really likable narrator/protagonist, 19-year-old would-be slacker Sammy, who's forced to grow up and take over the leadership of a small group of survivors on the run from a zombie apocalypse. The supporting characters are good, too, but Sammy really carries this story, which reads like the first chapter in an on-going serialized novel. The focus is very tight, the reader doesn't really know what's going on beyond this small group of characters, but I'm sensing some sort of epic structure behind it all. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

I also have Lowrance's short story collection DIG TEN GRAVES (a great title), but I haven't gotten to it yet. Between THE BASTARD HAND and these two stories, though, I'm very close to saying that whatever Heath Lowrance wants to write, I want to read it. Highly recommended. 

The Bastard Hand - Heath Lowrance

Some of the blurbs for Heath Lowrance’s debut from the great New Pulp Press compare it to a Gold Medal novel. There are certainly some similarities, especially early on.


THE BASTARD HAND starts out with its protagonist and narrator, Charlie Wesley, being thrown out of a bar in Memphis. Charlie is on the run after escaping from a mental institution in the Pacific Northwest. He’s on his way to Florida to visit his brother’s grave, but he’s taking his time about getting there and is basically drifting. Charlie is maybe crazy, maybe not, but his dead brother talks to him and gives him advice.


Before Charlie can get out of Memphis, though, he has another mentor, because he encounters and befriends an eccentric and vaguely sinister preacher, Reverend Phinneas Childe. The reverend is on his way to become the pastor of the Baptist church in the small northern Mississippi town of Cuba Landing, and he asks Charlie to come with him. Being in no hurry to get anywhere, Charlie agrees.


If you’ve read very many books like this, you already know that’s probably not a good idea.


Of course it’s not, because when Charlie and the reverend get to Cuba Landing, they discover it’s one of those wonderful noir novel towns where nearly everybody has a secret, and most of them are pretty dark. The previous pastor of the church has disappeared under suspicious circumstances, there’s a beautiful blond femme fatale, the mayor and the chief of police may well be corrupt . . . you know the drill.


If a well-written Gold Medal pastiche was all THE BASTARD HAND was, it would still be a very good book. But about halfway through the book, in a subplot that involves some Memphis gangsters who are after Charlie, Lowrance throws a curve and introduces an utterly bizarre twist and turns this novel into something that may have been influenced by those Fifties Gold Medals but is a whole other creature all its own. As the book progresses, the small-town secrets get weirder, too, as Lowrance weaves together the various strands of the plot and ramps things up into a fascinating combination of throwback noir, gritty crime thriller, Southern Gothic, and pure fantasy.


There’s no way to say much more about the plot without ruining things. The characters are vividly drawn, the action scenes are well done, there’s just enough humor to offset a little of the grimness, and every time Lowrance takes such a risk that you think the book is about to crash and burn in silliness, he finds a way to pull it off in spectacular fashion. Yes, THE BASTARD HAND is a little over the top. I have no problem with that. In fact, this is easily one of the best books I’ve read this year, and I’m already looking forward to seeing what Heath Lowrance comes up with next. Needless to say, THE BASTARD HAND gets a high recommendation from me.