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.

Celebrations in the Ossuary - Kyle J. Knapp

It's a cliche, but in this case it's true: I sat down to glance at this book and wound up reading the whole thing. As many of you know, Kyle J. Knapp was David Cranmer's nephew who passed away earlier this summer. That makes this collection of his poetry that much more poignant, but it's powerful in its own right. Proving, I guess, that maybe noir runs in the family, many of the poems here focus on death, loss, and struggle and have a decidedly dark edge, but that's balanced with vivid, beautiful imagery and clever wordplay that leavens the tone with a bit of humor. It's compelling stuff, no doubt about that. Highly recommended.

Vin of Venus - Paul D. Brazill, David Cranmer, and Garnett Elliott

Remember when you were in high school and your buddy who read the same kind of stuff you did came up to you in the hall between classes and shoved a book in your hand and said, "You gotta read this! It's great!"?

Well, that's what I'm doing with VIN OF VENUS. I'm shoving the e-book into your virtual hand and saying, "You gotta read this! It's great!"

As much as I love both hardboiled crime fiction and swashbuckling Sword and Planet adventure, I probably never would have thought of merging the two. Luckily, Paul D. Brazill, David Cranmer, and Garnett Elliott did think of it, and the result is this collection of several short stories and a novella that form the first part of a series I hope will run for a long time.

The title character wakes up missing his left arm, his left leg, and his memory. Some people try to help him, but naturally, sinister forces are at work, too, as Vin (that's the only name he knows himself by) tries to find out who he really is and what happened to him. Along the way he's haunted by dreams of himself living another life, one of sword-swinging adventure on the planet Venus before a catastrophe turned it into the unlivable planet it is now.

The authors do a great job of moving back and forth between the two storylines and dropping hints and clues about what the truth really is. And even more impressively, the hardboiled thriller elements and the fantasy elements are handled with equal skill, so that both ring true.

VIN OF VENUS is really entertaining, and I'm looking forward to finding out what happens next. In the meantime, if you haven't picked this one up, I highly recommend that you get in on the beginning of this saga.

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!

Cash Laramie: Manhunter's Mountain - Wayne D. Dundee

David Cranmer continues to allow other authors to contribute to the on-going saga of U.S. Marshals Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles, and he couldn't have made a better choice for MANHUNTER'S MOUNTAIN than Wayne D. Dundee, who has rapidly vaulted into the top ranks of current Western writers.

The manhunter of the title is Arapaho-raised, hardnosed lawman Cash Laramie, who arrives in the dying mining town of Silver Gulch on the trail of a fugitive. He finds and arrests his quarry in pretty short order, but as it turns out, that's not his main challenge. There are other manhunters, too, and Cash's big job will be getting out of the mountains in the middle of a winter storm with some murderous miners and a ruthless bounty hunter on his trail. The two soiled doves he's trying to get back to civilization at the same time will only complicate matters.

Dundee keeps the action moving along at a rapid pace, and as always, Cash Laramie is a compelling character, a testament to Cranmer's creation of him in the first place. The supporting characters are interesting as well, and the fact that not everything turns out exactly as you might expect is an added bonus. So are the excellent descriptions of the landscape and the way the mountains and the weather almost become characters in their own right.

MANHUNTER'S MOUNTAIN is a fast, very entertaining novel, and I'm sure fans of Cash Laramie and of Westerns in general will thoroughly enjoy it. I certainly did.

"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".

Beat to a Pulp: A Rip Through Time - Chris F. Holm, Charles A. Gramlich, Garnett Elliott, Chad Eagleton

BEAT TO A PULP: A RIP THROUGH TIME is further proof, as if we needed it, that David Cranmer is an inexhaustible source of ideas these days. He came up with the characters and basic plot for this series of short stories, then turned them over to authors Chris F. Holm, Charles Gramlich, Garnett Elliott, and Chad Eagleton to write. The result is this highly entertaining compilation that actually works quite well as a novel.

The story finds Temporal Security agent Simon Rip and the beautiful and brilliant scientist Dr. Serena Ludwig chasing Dr. Robert Berlin through time. Berlin, it seems has stolen his new invention from The Company, the 23^rd Century international cartel that Rip, Ludwig, and Berlin all work for. From prehistoric times to Arthurian England to the Havana of Ernest Hemingway in the late 1940s, the chase proceeds in an action-packed adventure very reminiscent of those fondly remembered AGENT OF T.E.R.R.A. novels by "Larry Maddock" that many of us read back in the Sixties.

Ah, but then things begin to take some unexpected turns. All is not as it seems. The stakes are ramped up until A RIP THROUGH TIME becomes a rather mind-boggling cosmic epic that reaches to the very ends of space and time. After all that, it seems odd at first that the book concludes with what appears to be a Victorian-era horror story, but again, things take an unexpected twist and this story cleverly serves as both prequel and coda to the rest of the novel. Then Ron Scheer provides an excellent afterword that looks at time travel in books and movies and speculates on the science involved in traveling through time.

One thing that seems to be missing in a lot of current science fiction is a sense of fun.  A RIP THROUGH TIME has that sense of fun, in spades, and manages to be thought provoking as well. I'm sure there's more to come from the crew that put this together, and I'm looking forward to it. Highly recommended.

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!

Two Books Not to Miss

I read Wayne Dundee's DISMAL RIVER a while back and thought it was one of the best Westerns I'd read in years. I still do. It's available now in paperback with an e-book edition coming soon. And while I haven't yet read all of David Cranmer's Cash Laramie stories (written under the name Edward A. Grainger), I've read enough of them to know that this collection is a must-have, as well. In fact, it's already sitting on my Kindle, waiting for me to have a few spare moments.

Beat to a Pulp

If you haven't done so yet, head on over to David Cranmer's new Beat to a Pulp webzine and read Patti Abbott's story "The Instrument of Their Desire". It's an excellent story with one of the best opening paragraphs I've read in a long time, as well as some very nice twists in the plot. A great beginning to what promises to be a fine webzine.