Young Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves became blood brothers on the day the rancher’s son saved the half breed’s life, forging a bond no one could ever break. As years passed, a legend grew of the half breed and the white man who rode together—and pulled iron faster than anyone in the West. . .A madman and a killer, Preacher Joshua Shade is on a long journey to Yuma Prison and a date with the hangman. But Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves doubt that Shade will ever keep that date. The outlaw has a legion of fanatical, bloodthirsty followers. Matt and Sam are shadowing Shade’s convoy—just in case. . . Views: 70
Working undercover in order to stop a consumer advocacy agency from putting Detroit auto companies out of business, ex-cop and car lover Rick Amery becomes involved in the conflagration of a black gang war. Reprint.From Publishers WeeklyThe second installment of Estleman's Detroit trilogy ( Whiskey River ) is terrific: fast, intricate and often funny. Choreographing the movements leading to the August 1966 Detroit riots, Estleman focuses on three main characters: Rick Amery, an ex-cop hired to spy on a Ralph Nader-like consumer advocate; inspector Lew Canada, trying to prevent a war between the Mafia and black gangs, and a likely race riot; and Quincy Springfield, numbers racketeer and "blind pig" (after-hours club) operator. But the author does not stint on minor characters, and they, too, leap off the page. A crippled mob boss resolves to oust "the coloreds" from the rackets while his exiled father schemes to reclaim the family business; there's also a retired newsman right off The Front Page , plus a Jimmy Hoffa-type labor leader. Set pieces are no less than stunning, notably a publicity stunt to embarrass GM chairman James Roche, and a big black funeral. Period details work wonderfully as well: the clothes, cars, songs, political references, even the price of lamb chops at the A & P are right on the money. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalMotown is Motor City, the Detroit of Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler, the Detroit of street hogs, blind pigs, union bosses, and tough cops. It's a rough town, rife with dirt, crime, and corruption, its steamy streets redolent of whiskey, blood, and sweat. This is the second volume of a trilogy ( Whiskey River , Bantam, 1990, was the first) tracing the history of the city from the bottom up. It's the summer of 1966. A Nader-like consumer advocate is just starting to take on the automobile industry. The ghetto is near to boiling. The mayor has the presidential itch, and a local mobster is making a bid to take over the black numbers racket. The story follows the actions of a former police lieutenant as he becomes a consumer advocate, and a black entrepreneur as he becomes the pillar of Detroit's black resistance. Is it good? Listen, Estleman knows crime fiction in ways that Bo can only dream about.- David B. Mattern, Univ. of Virginia, CharlottesvilleCopyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. Views: 70
The Greatest Western Writer Of The 21st CenturyFrom America's most popular, bestselling Western writer, each novel in this brilliant new series follows the trail of a different gun—each gun with its own fiery story to tell.On the American frontier, every gun tells a story.A boy in Texas waits for a Christmas present he chose from a Montgomery Ward catalog. The present, a brand new, lever action Winchester 1886 and a box of its big .50-caliber slugs, never makes it there. Instead, the rifle is caught up in a train robbery and starts a long and violent journey of its own—from the hands of a notorious, kill-crazy outlaw to an Apache renegade to a hardscrabble rancher and beyond. But while the prized Winchester is wandering the West—aimed, fired, battered and bartered—Deputy U.S. Marshal Jimmy Mann is hunting for the outlaw who robbed the train in Texas. The only clue he has is this prized and highly coveted weapon. What stands in his way... Views: 69
THE GREATEST WESTERN WRITERS OF THE 21ST CENTURY At the Sugarloaf Ranch, Smoke and Sally Jensen prepare to welcome Preacher home for the holidays—unaware that their friend is trailed by a storm full of trouble. On a mission of vengeance, an old trapper is rescued by Ace and Chance Jensen from ruthless outlaws—and wanted by a driven bounty hunter named Luke Jensen. And, just released from prison, a criminal mastermind assembles a vicious gang of cutthroats to extract his final revenge against his enemy—the sheriff of Big Rock, Colorado . . . With a snowstorm brewing, a community in jeopardy, and a showdown ready to explode, these courageous pioneers are brought together by fate and fury to forge peace on earth. But they're going to have to fight for it. With guns. With grit. With glory. Because this Christmas, the greatest gift of all is . . . staying alive.RAVES FOR BUTCH CASSIDY THE LOST... Views: 69
The Greatest Western Writer Of The 21st CenturyUSA Today bestselling novelists William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone unleash the saga of Falcon MacCallister—wanderer, lawman, heir to a Western family that raised him on courage, vigilance, and gunsmoke.This Is No Day To DieIn Sorrento, Texas, there is only one law: the hangman's law. Right now the condemned waits for his last meal in a cramped jail cell. But Falcon MacCallister will not go quietly to the gallows. . .Falcon was called to Sorrento by a crusading newspaper reporter trying to expose a conspiracy of greed and corruption—with innocent men dying at the end of a court-ordered rope. As acting U.S. Marshal, Falcon quickly makes some very dangerous enemies. Then he himself is sentenced to hang. But in twenty-four hours he'll be out of jail, out on the streets, and shooting lead against a small army of gunmen. Because he knows the three men who have taken over Sorrento. And he... Views: 69
Feared throughout the West, wolfer Asa North is as ferocious and ruthless as the wolves he hunts. But he may have finally met his match in Black Jack, the cunning, blood-thirsty beast whose pack has ravaged innumerable herds of sheep and cattle. Views: 69
Thunder City presents Detroit in the process of becoming the Motor City. Harlan Crownover, scion of a great family of carriage makers, battles with his father to invest in a company run by Henry Ford, who has failed twice before in the automobile business. Desperate for funds, Harlan turns to Big .Jim Dolan, the Midwest's most powerful political boss, and Sal Borneo, a visionary mafioso struggling to bring the commerce of vice into the new century. Allies at first, they soon will be mortal enemies. At the crisis, only Edith Hampton Crownover, Harlan's troubled, aristocratic mother, will be in a position to shift the balance of power.From Publishers WeeklyDetroit is most of the setting for Estleman's crime dramas (he is also an acclaimed author of westerns), but the author sees seven of his novels in particular as forming a "Detroit Series," charting the city's history and telling in microcosm the history of the U.S. in the 20th century. This seventh and final installment, a colorful and suspenseful peek into mobster dens and automobile factories and boardrooms, rounds out the writer's chronicle of the Motor City. It is the first decade of the 20th century and Detroit is the bustling center of automobile development and manufacture. Harlan Crownover, son of a wealthy carriage-making tycoon, is swept up in the romance and novelty of the horseless carriage, much to his father's disgust and rage. Harlan, however, is a visionary and, seeing a future for the automobile, joins with Henry Ford to start the Ford Motor Company. Seeking investment money, Harlan first approaches Big Jim Dolan, a slick and powerful Irish politician with competing business interests, who sends Harlan packing. Harlan next strikes a deal with Sal Borneo, a shrewd and murderous Mafia boss who has no interest in automobiles, but who has something else in mind as the payoff for his investment. Invoking political expediency and threatening blackmail, Harlan's father induces Dolan and Borneo to join him in an unlikely conspiracy to ruin Ford and crush Harlan, but they underestimate their unconventional opponents in the legal, media and banking battles that result. Ford and Harlan's triumph over the cabal is exceedingly clever and satisfying, but it is Borneo's sharp forward-thinking vision that is most chilling. Profiting from Estleman's usual careful plotting, accurate backgrounds and crisp narrative, this is a gritty novel of high ideals and low morals, of men trying desperately to outwit one another whatever the cost in the heady days of invention and industry in Detroit. (Nov.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus ReviewsFifth in the highly lauded series of Detroit novels that began with 1990's Whiskey River, a marvel of Prohibition-era description, and continued variously with Motown, King of the Corner, and, most recently, Edsel (1995). The story this time goes back to turn-of-the-century Detroit and Henry Fords third attempt to make his automobile factory solvent. Almost no one thinks that Fords horseless carriage will ever take off and pay for itselfno one but Harlan Crownover, widely seen as the slow-brained member of a family renowned for its business sense. Harlans father, Abner Crownover II, had risen from grease boy in his own fathers firm to youthful genius who turned the firm into one that built short-haul freight vehicles and passenger coaches. These were capped by the elegant Crownover opera coach, which rode on a superb suspension system invented by Abner II, subsequently patented, leased to all other coach makers, and insuring Abner II of millions of dollars for the rest of his life. Or as long as coaches are madeand now young Harlan is backing Henry Ford. Harlan goes to Big Jim Dolan, the citys street railway commissioner, for a $5,000 loan he plans to sink into Fords ingenious new assembly-line factory. When Dolan turns him down, Harlan hits up the Sicilian Prince, rising protection-racket boss Sal Borneo. Aside from being a health faddist, Borneo, tied to Dolan, has his hand in the city governmentand into Ford by way of Harlan? Will Ford solve his rear-axle problem by stealing Abner II's spring suspension system? Will Harlan eventually take over the factory and become the new Coach Prince? Will bloody Sal turn on Harlan? A tour de force of descriptive energy, researched to hairs-breadth accuracy of detail, and packed with characters vivid enough to make Frank Norris dance a jig with Theodore Dreiser. Estlemans final cut on this epic series should be a single chronological, chrome-plated volume of mirror-clear prose. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Views: 69
For almost forty years, Robert B. Parker's inimitable private investigator Spenser has been solving cases and selling millions of books worldwide. Now, for the first time, see how it all began as the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master sheds light on Spenser's formative years spent with his father and two uncles out West. This is an event book for every fan of Spenser, and a revelation for teens about to discover an American icon. Views: 69
The Barnes Noble Review Much of Robert B. Parker's fiction – his recent Spenser novel, Potshot, is a notable example – has straddled the boundary between two traditional forms: the private-eye novel and the Western. Parker's latest, the spare, evocative Gunman's Rhapsody, represents his first attempt at a pure, unadulterated Western, moving from Boston and environs to Tombstone, Arizona and focusing on one of Spenser's true spiritual forebears: Wyatt Earp. Gunman's Rhapsody begins in 1879. Wyatt, whose exploits have already found their way into the dime novels of the period, has just arrived in Tombstone, accompanied by several of his brothers and his common-law wife, Mattie Blaylock. The Tombstone of this era is a semi-lawless boomtown located in the heart of the silver mine district. It also serves as a kind of crossroads, a meeting place for some of the iconic figures of the Old West, figures such as Johnny Ringo, Bat Masterson, Ike Clanton, Katie Elder, and the drunken, slightly demented gunfighter, Doc Holliday. A single romantic encounter dominates this rambling, almost plotless narrative: Wyatt's discovery of the love of his life: beautiful showgirl Josie Marcus, who happens to be engaged to Johnny Behan, the shady, politically connected Sheriff of Tombstone. Wyatt's affair with Josie – which takes on an obsessive, almost mythical dimension – forms the central element in an interlocking series of personal rivalries and political enmities that will culminate in the gunfight at the OK Corral, and in its bloody, extended aftermath. Parker's clean elegant style and essentially romantic sensibility prove perfectly suited to the peculiar material of this novel. Without a false note or wasted word, Parker recreates the ambiance of the West, bringing its saloons, jails, and gambling halls and its endless, wide-open vistas, to immediate, palpable life. He brings that same effortless authority to bear in describing the lives and motivations of violent, hard-edged men who live – and sometimes die – according to highly developed codes of personal behavior. The result is a fascinating historical digression that illuminates a piece of the American past while simultaneously illuminating the central concerns of Parker's large, constantly evolving body of work. (Bill Sheehan) Views: 69
Come And Take ItThe worst-case scenario has come to pass: a nuclear strike has crippled America. Gangs, looters, and vandals have seized the streets. The decent few can only pray for a leader to protect them. Luckily, one of the survivors is Ben Raines.Rebel mercenary, retired soldier, and tireless patriot, Raines is searching for his missing family in the aftermath of this devastating war. His relentless pursuit through the ruined cities of the west unites him with the civilians of the Resistance forces. They become his recruits for a revolutionary army dedicated to rebuilding America. Then comes the final outrage: an armed attack by government forces. With the fate of America's New Patriots hanging in the balance, Raines vows--government be damned--to survive, find his family, and lead this once great nation out of the ashes. Views: 68
THE GREATEST WESTERN WRITERS OF THE 21ST CENTURY From America's bestselling Western authors comesthis violent saga of the frontier legend known as the Town Tamer: the man who appears when all justice has fled... FEED THE BEAST--OR DIE On the West Texas border a behemoth is bellowing smoke, fire and death. This monster is the infamous Abaddon Cannon Foundry, whose weapons of war have spread death and destruction around the world--and made a few men in Big Buck, Texas, incredibly rich. Now, a Mexican-born teenager has disappeared into this fortress factory, where men work and sweat as slaves. This boy's sister wants to learn her brother's fate, and she just happens to know a man named Shawn O'Brien, the town tamer. Shawn rides to Texas to find the missing boy. What he discovers in Big Buck will spark a ferocious, bloody battle with the greatest evil the West ever known: masters of war who (laugh in the face of anyone who defies... Views: 68
There's Nothing A Man Won't Do To Clear His NameThey called him fastest gun alive, but Smoke Jensen is determined to stay on the right side of the law. That is, until he's jumped by six low-life robbers who steal his shirt--and his identity. Smoke's tried for robbery and murder, and sentenced to hang in morning. Someone's out to frame the Mountain Man . . . someone who's made a big mistake.Justice--Mountain Man StyleBarely managing to escape on the morning of his hanging, Smoke's going after the desperados who've set him up. The gang thinks they have nothing to fear; they've already divided up the loot and gone their separate ways. But Smoke's going to hunt them down one by one. Because nobody frames the Mountain Man. Nobody who plans on staying alive, that is . . . Views: 68
