Review: The Lotus and the Dragon - Brent Towns

Brent Towns has been highly successful writing Westerns, men’s adventure novels, hardboiled private detective yarns, and World War II action tales. Now he’s moving into yet another genre, the epic historical adventure novel, with his latest release, THE LOTUS AND THE DRAGON.

Taking place in Australia in the 1870s and ’80s, THE LOTUS AND THE DRAGON is narrated by Jack Crowe, a tough, hardbitten protagonist who starts out as a bounty hunter. After being unjustly convicted of a crime, he’s sent to an isolated sheep station to work off his sentence. When that is finally behind him, he starts a freight business, only to run afoul of violence and tragedy again and start a vendetta against a renegade police officer that will last for years.

The rather episodic plot of this novel follows Jack through stretches involving mining, riverboating, and romances with several beautiful women who may or may not be trustworthy. Encounters with various enemies result in him being beaten up, shot, nearly drowned, and left for dead more than once. Those enemies include not only corrupt policemen and politicians but also bushrangers, whoremongers, slavers, and an American business tycoon who ruthlessly takes over the Australian riverboat trade.

THE LOTUS AND THE DRAGON is one tough, gritty book. The action never lets up for long, and Jack Crowe takes enough punishment for several novels but is resilient enough to keep fighting all the way to an ending that’s crying out for a sequel. If you’re a fan of Wilbur Smith and Bernard Cornwell, you really need to check out this novel. It’s the same sort of epic, sweeping adventure and is very well-done. THE LOTUS AND THE DRAGON is one of the best books I’ve read this year, and I give it a high recommendation. It's available from Wolfpack Publishing on Amazon in e-book and paperback editions.

Review: Rails Into Hell - Brent Towns

I enjoy railroad yarns, especially ones featuring railroad detectives, so the Faraday series is a natural for me as both writer and reader. I’m strictly a reader on the latest novel in the series to be released, RAILS INTO HELL by Brent Towns.

The thread that ties these books together is Faraday Security Services, owned by Matthew Faraday, a Pinkerton-like detective agency that works only for the railroads. Other than that, the books are largely stand-alones featuring different Faraday agents as the protagonists. In RAILS INTO HELL, Jack Quade has a reputation as a gunslinger for hire, and at one time that’s exactly what he was, after clashing with his rancher father and leaving home. For the past several years, however, he’s been working as an undercover Faraday agent while maintaining his reputation as a fast gun.

The murder of a surveyor who’s laying out the route for a spur line brings Quade back to his old stomping grounds, where he discovers that a range war is brewing between his father and a rich man who has moved in and started gobbling up all the smaller spreads in the area. Quade has to juggle both problems and try to find out if they might be connected, while at the same time dealing with complications involving a couple of beautiful women. And then there are the continued attempts on his life, one of which might just prove successful before he can untangle the dangerous threads of this assignment.

Towns provides a lot of genuinely surprising plot twists in this novel, along with plenty of action told in an effectively gritty style. RAILS INTO HELL reminded me of the great hardboiled Westerns published by Gold Medal, Ace, and Dell in the Fifties and Sixties. It’s well-written and fast-paced, and I hope there’ll be more Faraday novels in the future. In the meantime, this one from Wolfpack Publishing is available on Amazon in e-book and paperback editions, and if you’re a fan of tough-minded Western novels, I give it a high recommendation.

Review: Sara and the Mad Dog - Stephen Mertz

Music was very important to Steve Mertz. Along with writing, it was really one of his passions. He was an accomplished musician, too, and it showed in his work. His novels that feature a music industry background have a real sense of authenticity to them.

So it’s fitting that his final novel is a thriller based on the music business. SARA AND THE MAD DOG is a wonderful amalgam of music history, gangster history, and fiction as the Carter Family, the First Family of Country Music, travels to New York City for a concert at Carnegie Hall in 1932, arriving just in time for Sara Carter, the group’s vocalist and wife of A.P. Carter, to get involved with Vince “Mad Dog” Coll, a ruthless Irish mobster who’s engaged in a gang war with Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luciano. That’s a great concept for a novel!

Mertz does it justice, too, with a fast-paced narrative in which the action takes place in less than 24 hours. The story moves back and forth between Sara, A.P., Maybelle Carter (the third member of the group), Jimmie Rodgers (the Singing Brakeman) assorted gangsters, and a fictional police detective named Tom Devlin. Mertz weaves all their storylines together very skillfully and creates a real sense of momentum and suspense. Great storyteller that he was, he really had me flipping the pages to find out what was going to happen.

The historical elements of the plot are well-researched and accurate, too, as Mertz explains in an afterword detailing what was fact and what was fiction. All of it comes together in a superb novel that’s the best thing I’ve read so far this year and maybe my favorite of all the Mertz novels I’ve read. I’d hate to have to pick between this one and HANK AND MUDDY, a fantastic yarn about Hank Williams and Muddy Waters. SARA AND THE MAD DOG is a fitting conclusion to a legendary career, and it gets my highest recommendation. You can find it on Amazon in e-book and paperback editions from Wolfpack Publishing.

And on a personal note, damn, I hate to think the phone’s never going to ring again with Steve on the other end, eager to tell me about some book or writer or the project he was planning to work on next. There was nobody else in this business like him. Nobody. He was, as they say, the Genuine Article, and I expect I’ll miss him from now on.

Nordic & Finn - Peter Brandvold

Anders Nordic is a big, bearded Scandinavian from Dakota Territory who’s working holding down a line camp on a ranch in New Mexico. He’s an unsociable sort, so the solitary life at the line camp suits him very well. But he has to go into the nearby town of Cimarron from time to time to pick up supplies, and once day while he’s in the settlement, he sees some boys picking on a stray dog. Anders likes dogs and maybe even senses a certain kinship with this one, so he puts a stop to the abuse and sends the scared youngsters scurrying away.

Unfortunately, one of the boys is the son of the local banker, whose pride and arrogance prompts him to try to have Anders arrested. This does not go well, and Anders’ simple impulse to carry out a good deed is instead the opening move in a series of increasingly bloody and tragic circumstances.

NORDIC & FINN is the latest novel and the first in a new series from Peter Brandvold, one of today’s most popular Western writers. He’s long been a favorite of mine, and he certainly doesn’t disappoint this time around. He writes action as well as anyone in the business and always creates compelling characters. Anders Nordic is a great protagonist, very likable despite his solitary nature, or maybe because of it since the reader gets to see him temper that self-imposed isolation in his developing relationships with Finn (the dog he rescues) and several humans who prove to be good friends.

However, this is a Brandvold book, so it’s not all warm fuzzies. The action is tough and unrelenting, and not everything turns out exactly as you might expect. It sure had me turning the pages to find out what was going to happen, and it even kept me up later than I intended in order to do just that, something that almost never happens these days. If you’re a Western fan, I give NORDIC & FINN a very high recommendation. It’s available from Wolfpack Publishing in e-book and trade paperback editions on Amazon, and it's one of the best books I’ve read this year. I’m looking forward to the next volume in the series.

The Wrap Up

There’s no point in denying that 2022 was a rotten year in many ways, but there’s also no point in dwelling on that. So let’s turn our attention to more pleasant endeavors, such as writing, reading, editing, and publishing.

To take those things in reverse order, for most of this year I was the editor of Rough Edges Press, the mystery/thriller/men’s adventure imprint of Wolfpack Publishing. It was a wonderful job, as I got to work with Mike Bray, Jake Bray, Patience Bramlett, and all the other great people at Wolfpack, in addition to all the authors involved. While there, I was privileged to edit some really excellent books, and I’m proud of what the line accomplished. However, I stepped down at the end of October because I discovered that I couldn’t both edit and write at the level I wanted to, and although I didn’t mind slowing down some on my page production (more about that in the next paragraph) I just wasn’t ready to stop writing full-time. There are still too many books in my head clamoring to get out.

As I mentioned a few posts back, 2022 was the first year since 2004 that I didn’t write at least a million words of fiction. So the streak ends at 17 years, and while I might have preferred an even number (yes, I am a little OCD), I’m absolutely fine with that. I wrote approximately 900,000 words this year. That’s plenty. I think 750,000 would be a good total for 2023. I wrote at that level for many years before I started hitting a million, and I think I can continue producing at that level for a while yet. My plan for next year is to keep up with my regular ghost-writing job (I’m committed to approximately half a million words there) and devote the rest of the wordage to a few books of my own. We’ll see.

On the reading front, it was a good year, not at all rotten. I read 138 books. Here are my top ten favorites, in the order in which I read them:

A GUIDE TO THE GOOD LIFE: THE ANCIENT ART OF STOIC JOY, William B. Irvine

GUNS OF THE DAMNED, Stone Cody (Thomas E. Mount)

IN THE PULP FICTION TRENCHES, Len Levinson

STAND UP AND DIE!: THE LOST THRILLERS OF MICKEY SPILLANE, Mickey Spillane

THE SPIDER: SCOURGE OF THE SCORPION, Will Murray

GHOST OF THE HARDY BOYS, Leslie McFarlane

FROM THE FILES OF . . . MIKE HAMMER, Mickey Spillane

THE RANCH CAT (apa STRAIGHT FROM BOOT HILL), Willliam Hopson

JANE FURY, James Robert Daniels

CALICO, Lee Goldberg

I’m aware that’s a pretty odd mix. Two of them I edited (the Levinson memoir and the Spillane prose collection; the other Spillane book is a collection of the Mike Hammer comic strip I had nothing to do with). Two of them aren’t out yet because I read them in manuscript, JANE FURY and CALICO, but they’ll be out next year and you should remember those titles because they’re great. The pulp influence is there in GUNS OF THE DAMNED, the first novel in the Silver Trent series originally published in THE WESTERN RAIDER and STAR WESTERN, and in the Hopson novel because he got his start in the Western pulps, and in the new Spider novel by Will Murray since the Spider is one of the iconic pulp hero characters. My study of Stoic philosophy kind of petered out as the year went on, but the lessons I learned from it came in handy more than once and I still plan to get back to it.

There were at least two dozen other books right on the verge of making this list, including quite a few I edited, starting with Jamie Mason’s Father Barrett series and Ryan Fowler’s Father Tag Nolan series. Both of those feature priests/detectives and both are absolutely excellent, but beyond that, they couldn’t be more different. You should check them out if you haven’t already. Chuck Dixon’s Levon Cade series continued this year with several great entries. Brent Towns added another top-notch action/adventure series to his tireless output with TALON and also gave us some fine hardboiled private eye novels set in Australia. Nik Morton’s Leon Cazador books are fast-paced international thrillers with a great protagonist. Stephen Mertz’s latest Cody’s War novel demonstrates that he hasn’t lost a step and is still a legend in the action/adventure field. And these are just Rough Edges Press books. I also read some great pulp reprints from Altus Press/Steeger Books and several superb hardboiled/noir novels from Stark House/Black Gat Books/Staccato Crime. I swear, if you can’t find plenty of great books to read these days, you’re just not looking hard enough!

Finally, this blog suffered a bit in 2022 because I just didn’t have enough time to devote to it. As a result, there were fewer posts than any year since I started it in 2004—and since I started it in July, that was only half a year. I hope to post more in 2023, including more book reviews, the return of movie reviews, and maybe an occasional post about what else is going on in my life, although generally, that stuff is pretty boring. My thanks to all of you reading this, whether you’ve been a regular reader since 2004 or just found the blog. Like the WesternPulps email group (which will celebrate its 24^th anniversary this spring), I intend to keep this going for a good long while yet.

Editing and Writing Update

Effective today, I’m retired as the editor of Rough Edges Press. I sold the original REP to Wolfpack Publishing a little more than a year ago and stayed on to run the line. After much thought, I’ve decided that I need to get back to writing full-time for a few more years. I really enjoyed working for Wolfpack, and I’m proud of the books we published there. I want to thank Mike Bray, Jake Bray, Paul Bishop, Laura Sarrafan, Kristin Yahner, all the fine authors I worked with, and especially the amazing Patience Bramlett, who did all the heavy lifting and made it possible for Rough Edges Press to function. I’m leaving the line in her capable hands, and I know there’ll be some great books coming from REP in the future.

On the writing front, my production for the year is right around 750,000 words, so with only two months left in 2022, I think it’s safe to say that my million-words-a-year streak really is ending this time. I’ll probably finish somewhere between 850K and 900K, which is still pretty productive. I’m committed to doing around half a million words in my regular ghosting job next year, and I hope to do a few books of my own, too. 750K is a good pace. I did that for almost 20 years before bumping it up to a million. I’d like to ease back even more than that. But I’m sure that as long as I’m capable of stringing words together coherently, no matter how long it takes, I’ll be writing something.

The Gun Wolves - Wayne D. Dundee

Wayne D. Dundee’s novels featuring former army scout Lone McGantry are some of my favorite current Westerns. The most recent entry in the series, THE GUN WOLVES, finds McGantry on the trail of a no-good thief who stole his horse. He discovers that a beautiful female bounty hunter named Velda is after the same hombre, and McGantry doesn’t fight too hard against the idea of teaming up to go after their quarry.

The problem is that the fella is on his way to a Wyoming town called Pickaxe, which is run as an outlaw sanctuary by Lobo Hines and his band of killers known as the Gun Wolves. McGantry and Velda decide that they’ll infiltrate the town by her posing as a saloon singer and him as the hardcase she hired to accompany her to her destination. But on the way they meet a traveling preacher and his beautiful blond daughter, which leads to a number of complications that McGantry didn’t foresee.

As always, Dundee delivers another solidly entertaining traditional Western in THE GUN WOLVES, which is available in ebook and trade paperback editions. There’s plenty of tough, gritty action, some truly despicable villains, enough plot twists to keep things interesting, and a great protagonist in Lone McGantry, ably assisted this time by the capable and appealing Velda. (Named after Mike Hammer’s secretary, perhaps?) In my mind, Lone McGantry is John Wayne from the era of THE COMANCHEROS and THE SONS OF KATIE ELDER, and every time I read one of these books I feel like I’m watching an early Sixties movie with the Duke that I didn’t know existed until now. They’re great fun, and I highly recommend the entire series.

Now Available: Outlaw Ranger: Ravagers of the Border - James Reasoner

I have a new book out today from Wolfpack Publishing, the latest Outlaw Ranger novel RAVAGERS OF THE BORDER. Outlaw gangs are robbing banks, rustling cattle, murdering anybody who gets in their way, and generally raising hell on both sides of the border. Roped into the case by a former fellow lawman, G.W. Braddock, the Outlaw Ranger, sets out to discover what's really going on and bring the owlhoots to justice, no matter whether it means risking the wrath of a beautiful senorita or being tossed into a deadly sinkhole or facing the guns of a horde of vicious killers.

Most of you reading this know of my fondness for the fictional Texas Rangers Jim Hatfield and Walt Slade, and the influence of A. Leslie Scott and the other authors who contributed to those great Western pulp series on my work ought to be pretty obvious. I had a great time writing this book and hope that many of you will enjoy it as well. You can read it for free if you have Kindle Unlimited, or get a copy of the e-book for 99 cents, or pick up a handsome trade paperback edition if you prefer print.

Coming Soon: Outlaw Ranger: Ravagers of the Border - James Reasoner

Coming next month. I had a great time writing this one. With interesting characters and lots of all-out action, I think it's my favorite of the Outlaw Ranger series so far. I love the cover from Wolfpack Publishing, too.

Stripped and Branded - Peter Brandvold

Yakima Henry is probably my favorite character created by Peter Brandvold, and he returns in STRIPPED AND BRANDED, the latest novel from Brandvold. Yakima last appeared in the somewhat heart-warming REDEMPTION TRAIL. As you might guess from the title, STRIPPED AND BRANDED is a considerably harder-edged tale.

In this one, Yakima encounters three bank robbers on the run and desperate after killing three members of a posse and losing one of their horses. They want Yakima’s horse Wolf and are more than willing to kill to get him. Of course, this is a big mistake, and all three of the varmints wind up dead. Yakima takes the bodies back to the town where they robbed the bank, figuring he’ll collect the bounty on them (even though he’s not really a bounty hunter) and that money will finance the rest of his trip to Mexico, where he intends to spend the winter.

What he’s not counting on is the fact that one of the robbers was the black sheep son of the woman who owns the largest ranch in the area, and she wants vengeance. There are other things going on, too, but that’s best left to the reader to discover.

Nobody could ever accuse Brandvold of taking it easy on his characters. Yakima suffers a lot in this one, both physically and mentally. The action is almost non-stop, the characters come to vivid life, and Brandvold continues to be maybe the best in the business at setting a scene and making it real. His work always reminds me of some of the great hardboiled Western writers of the past, authors such as Harry Whittington, T.T. Flynn, William Heuman, Les Savage Jr., Marvin Albert, and Clifton Adams, although with a more modern, grittier tone. I give all of his work a very high recommendation, and STRIPPED AND BRANDED is one of his best.

Rough Edges Press News

LAS VEGAS (PRWEB) SEPTEMBER 29, 2021

Wolfpack Publishing announced the acquisition of Rough Edges Press (REP), an independent publisher started by award-winning author James Reasoner. As Wolfpack’s newest imprint, REP will focus on publishing crime, mystery and thriller novels. The acquisition also includes REP’s existing catalogue of work, including several novels written by current Wolfpack authors such as Robert J. Randisi, Wayne Dundee, Steve Mertz and many others.

Mike Bray, President and CEO of Wolfpack Publishing, said, “I’m honored to bring Rough Edges Press into Wolfpack’s growing family of imprints. James Reasoner is a born storyteller with a keen eye for choosing the kinds of books our audience wants to read. Rough Edges will play a key role in Wolfpack’s expansion into mysteries and thrillers while also introducing its impressive backlist to a new audience.”

James Reasoner, the founder of Rough Edges Press, said, “I have been impressed by the great work that Mike and his team at Wolfpack have done over the past several years. I’m grateful that Rough Edge’s existing works will see new life under the Wolfpack banner, and I look forward to what the future holds.”

Wolfpack will be announcing new titles to be released under the Rough Edges Press imprint in coming weeks. To learn more, please visit the website: http://www.roughedgespress.com, the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/RoughEdgesPress and on Twitter: @RoughEdgesPress.

About James Reasoner

James Reasoner has been a professional writer for more than 40 years. Under his own name and dozens of pseudonyms, he’s written almost 400 novels and more than 100 shorter pieces of fiction. His books have appeared on the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists. He has written Westerns, mysteries, historical sagas, war novels, science fiction and fantasy, and horror fiction.

About Wolfpack Publishing

Founded in 2013, Wolfpack Publishing is an award-winning independent publishing company based in Las Vegas, Nevada. The company was named as one of the fastest-growing independent publishers of 2020 by Publisher’s Weekly and one of Inc. Magazine’s fastest-growing private companies in 2021. Wolfpack Publishing embraces the opportunities created by online bookstores and their limitless virtual bookshelves. The company is also expanding its presence in the paperback market through a distribution deal with Ingram Publisher Service.

This has been developing behind the scenes for a while but is now official. So, in my career I've been a writer, a writer/editor, and now I'm going to be an editor/writer, meaning I won't be doing as many books of my own but will have the chance to work with a lot of fabulous writers, as well as the great team at Wolfpack Publishing. 

Levon's Trade - Chuck Dixon

FROM BEST-SELLING AUTHOR CHUCK DIXON COMES THE LEVON CADE SERIES – A CAN’T-PUT-IT-DOWN VIGILANTE JUSTICE SERIES.

Levon Cade left his profession behind to work construction. He just wants to live an anonymous life and be a good dad to his daughter. But when a local girl vanishes, he’s asked to return to the skills that made him a mythic figure in the shadowy world of counterterrorism.

Follow Levon and his daughter while they go on the run from the Feds and a growing army of enemies that Levon makes along the way.

(Chuck Dixon is one of my all-time favorite comic book writers, and over the past few years he's become one of my favorite novelists, as well. I'm a little behind on his work, but I recently read LEVON'S TRADE, the first book in his Levon Cade series, and it's great. Full of gritty action, a likable protagonist, well-developed villains and supporting characters, and quite a bit of wry, dark humor. This book read very fast and I really enjoyed it. The first six books in the series are available in one giant, inexpensive omnibus, and I'm eager to read the others. So far the Levon Cade series gets a high recommendation from me.)

Homicide: Saigon - Stephen Mertz

SAIGON, 1970.

Meet Cord McGavin, lone wolf investigator assigned to a special operations unit of the US Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. McGavin’s beat: the mean streets of this sprawling, violent metropolis ravaged by war. From its wealthy bastions of power, paid for by corruption and profiteering, to the alleys and waterfront shadows where human souls are bartered, deception is the name of the game. The threat of death is never more than a heartbeat away.

McGavin has his hands full. The brass thinks he’s too damn cowboy. Viet Cong assassin teams are operating openly across the city. He’s taken on a deadly coalition about to flood the streets of America with heroin. And oh yeah, there’s McGavin’s beautiful wife Kelly, a Pulitzer-class photo journalist newly arrived under an assumed name to document her husband’s war…

“Stephen Mertz writes a hard edged, fast paced thriller for those who like their tales straight and sharp!” – Joe R. Lansdale

(I've known Stephen Mertz and been reading his books for more years than I like to think about. This is his most recent novel, and it belongs in the top rank of his books. Mertz really knows how to spin a yarn, and HOMICIDE: SAIGON moves incredibly quickly, with a tough, smart protagonist in Cord McGavin. Plenty of action, some well-done romantic scenes between McGavin and his wife Kelly, and the occasional touch of dry humor all make this a really enjoyable novel. A couple of very good short stories featuring the same characters round out this volume. Steve Mertz is one of the legends of men's adventure fiction, and for good reason. I give HOMICIDE: SAIGON a high recommendation.)

West of Whitechapel: Jack the Ripper in the Wild West - Wayne D. Dundee

WITH A HUNGER FOR TRUTH, THIS THRILLING WESTERN WILL KEEP YOU ON YOUR TOES.

In the late 1880s, a series of grisly murders swept through the Whitechapel slums of London. The victims were all prostitutes, each found with her throat cut and her stomach sliced open. Sensationalized newspaper accounts of the killings spread throughout England and beyond to a horrified yet fascinated reading public. Heightening interest all the more were the taunting letters sent by the killer to Scotland Yard – boldly signed “Jack the Ripper”.

But then, abruptly, the killings stopped. The Ripper was never identified or captured, but the terror seemed over.

A few months later, however, on the American frontier in the raucous, rowdy mining camps that sprang up out of a silver boom in the Colorado Rockies, some eerily similar murders began to occur among the flocks of “soiled doves” who gathered to serve the men in those remote camps. With no law to speak of in such places and sudden death being all too common, no one seemed to take much notice.

Not until a sharp-eyed female journalist spotted the possible connection and became determined to find out the truth. Aided by a guilt-ridden though equally dogged frontier detective, the pair follow a bloody trail through the rugged mountains and boisterous mining camps to try and prove if Jack the Ripper truly ceased his killing ways … or did he merely move them out here – west of Whitechapel?

(Wayne D. Dundee is one of the most consistently entertaining Western writers in the business, so it's no surprise that his new novel from Wolfpack Publishing is excellent. The pace races along, he does a great job with the historical elements in the plot, and there are some twists I didn't see coming, which is always nice. Plus Lew Torrent, an operative for the Omaha & Points West Detective Agency, is a really likable narrator/protagonist and works well with the female journalist who draws him into the case. I really hope we see these two again, maybe tackling another historical mystery. In the meantime, WEST OF WHITECHAPEL gets a very high recommendation from me.)

Terminal Memory - Brian Drake

Brian Drake has been making a name for himself as an author of action/adventure novels for the past few years. TERMINAL MEMORY is the first book in his latest series and features Sam Raven, a former CIA agent who has left the Company and become a sort-of-freelance vigilante for hire, due to some mysterious tragedy in his life.

After a short section that introduces Raven and has him rescuing a kidnap victim, the main storyline of this book involves a more personal mission. Several years before this book opens, while Raven was still working for the CIA, he and four fellow agents were involved in a mission in Afghanistan that saw them captured and tortured by terrorists. Now three of those former agents are dead, leaving just Raven and his traumatized former lover Mara Cole. It’s up to Raven to find Mara, keep both of them from getting killed, discover who’s behind this apparent vendetta and why, and deliver some swift and deadly justice to them.

I really enjoyed this book. Too many contemporary thrillers suffer from a bad case of bloat and are at least twice as long as their plots justify. Not so TERMINAL MEMORY. Drake doesn’t waste a word and keeps things moving at a very fast pace most of the time. When the characters do slow down to take a breath, those scenes are well-written, too. There are two more Sam Raven novels out already, and I look forward to reading them. If you’re an action/adventure fan, TERMINAL MEMORY gets a high recommendation from me.

The Ranger: Concho - A.W. Hart (Charles Gramlich)

Concho Ten-Wolves is half black, half Kickapoo, a former Army Ranger, and currently a Texas Ranger working out of Eagle Pass, Texas, in this thriller that launches a new action/adventure series from Wolfpack Publishing. Charles Gramlich is the top-notch author behind the A.W. Hart house-name on THE RANGER: CONCHO, which was just released today.

The opening section of this novel, in which Concho takes on a gang of neo-Nazis who have taken over a shopping mall in Eagle Pass and are holding hostages, is spectacular, with plenty of great action and several stand-up-and-cheer moments. What follows is even better, with Concho getting involved in a double murder case that takes on some personal ramifications before it’s done, along with some political maneuvering centered around the Kickapoo Tribal Police and Concho’s own superiors in the Rangers. It’s a twisty, satisfying plot that never skimps on the action.

Gramlich has gotten this series off to a great start. THE RANGER: CONCHO is intelligently written, packs plenty of punch, and has one of the most compelling and likable protagonists I’ve encountered in a while. The next book will out later this summer, and I’m already looking forward to it. Highly recommended.

Classic Private Eye Novels: Case of the Vanishing Beauty - Richard S. Prather

The Shell Scott series by Richard S. Prather is one of my all-time favorite private eye series. I read nearly all of them when I was in junior high and high school and thoroughly enjoyed them. Recently, Wolfpack Publishing got the rights to reprint them and is reissuing the series in omnibus volumes. I just reread the first published (but not first written) novel, CASE OF THE VANISHING BEAUTY, for the first time in more than 50 years.

This one involves a beautiful blond client who hires Shell to have dinner with her, hints that something sinister is going on, but won’t give him the whole story; the client’s beautiful younger sister, who turns out to be missing (the “vanishing beauty” of the title); the beautiful target in a knife-throwing nightclub act (are you sensing a theme here?); a religious cult like so many others that show up in California-set private eye novels; and assorted gangsters and con-men, plus Shell’s police detective buddy Phil Samson.

Prather hadn’t quite hit his stride yet in the early novels, and that shows in a rather thin plot with few real surprises in it. But there’s plenty of snappy patter, some nice action scenes, and Shell himself, one of the most likable narrator/protagonists in the entire genre. For years I had a rule about not rereading books, but the older I get, the more I enjoy revisiting old favorites from time to time. I enjoyed CASE OF THE VANISHING BEAUTY. Prather’s prose is just fun to read. I’m sure I’ll be rereading more of the Shell Scott series.

Now Available: Faraday: The Buffalo Train - Robert Vaughan and James Reasoner

It started out as a silly idea to bring buyers back to Abilene. Wrangle some buffalo, put them on a train, and ship them to Chicago so folks back east could see the massive, shaggy beasts with their own eyes. The concept seemed sound. What could go wrong?

But for John Creed, agent for the famed Faraday Security Service, it was anything but simple. First, Hank Miles was willing to do whatever was required to prevent the plan from succeeding. Hiding in the shadows was a silent partner. Creed’s biggest threat, however, came from the man in black—an assassin who took pleasure in his work and would not stop coming until the job was complete.

Before the Buffalo Train reached the end of the line, guns would roar, men would die, and Chicago would get a taste of what the “Wild West” was really like.

(This is the first new Faraday book in many years and the first official collaboration between Robert Vaughan and myself. We've known each other for more than 30 years, have worked on many of the same series, and have had some input on each other's books from time to time. I think this is an excellent Western adventure yarn and hope some of you enjoy it.)

The Coldest Trail - Wayne D. Dundee

Wayne D. Dundee's latest Western novel, THE COLDEST TRAIL, is a direct sequel to his previous novel, THE FOREVER MOUNTAIN, taking up not long after that one left off. Lone McGantry has finished the dangerous task of laying the remains of his murdered partner to rest, and now he takes up the trail of the men responsible for killing the man and stealing the horse herd he and McGantry had on their ranch. Cold trail or not, McGantry is determined to track down the gang led by "the man with the burned face", as McGantry's partner told him before dying.

As always with a Dundee novel, you can count on a tough, stubborn protagonist, and Lone McGantry is one of his best. He's one of my favorite characters in the Western genre these days. You can also be sure that Dundee will pile a lot of trouble on the protagonist's head, and that's certainly true in THE COLDEST TRAIL. McGantry runs into plenty of obstacles and proddy characters during his quest, which also involves a stolen army payroll and a beautiful saloon singer known as Calamity Jane Jr.

Everything leads up to an action-packed final battle with McGantry's quarry that's one of the best I've read recently. It's great stuff, and very satisfying. Wayne Dundee is one of the best Western writers in the business, and you won't go wrong with any of his books. Highly recommended.

Now Available: Rattler's Law, Volume Two - James Reasoner

Wild Bill Hickok may be gone, but Abilene is still a wild and woolly cowtown in need of a strong marshal to bring law and order to its streets. That man is Lucas Flint . . . a legendary lawman sometimes known as the Rattler because of his swift and deadly speed with a Colt .45. Together with his deputy, dashing young gunfighter Cully Markham, Lucas Flint will take on any challenge that threatens the safety of the town and its people that he’s sworn to protect.

As a blizzard rages on the Kansas plains, an old buffalo hunter is caught in the crossfire between a Sioux war party and a clan of bank-robbing killers. A fortune in Confederate gold lures outlaws to Abilene. A young gunslinger bent on vengeance has a startling secret. A prize bull, a hard-bitten rancher, and a gang of thieves prove to be an explosive mixture for Cully Markham. A deadly Fourth of July celebration provides more than one kind of fireworks. A man sworn to uphold the law instead launches a reign of terror. A trio of mail order brides arrives in Abilene, but they bring flying lead rather than matrimonial bliss.

Rattler's Law, Volume Two includes: Buffalo Hunter, Rebel Gold, Devil With a .38, Hell on the Hoof, Gundown, Killer With a Badge, Six-Gun Wedding, and Big Fifty Justice.