Having decided I was in the mood for an old-fashioned Western, I requested an advance reading copy of High Country Justice by Nik James (to be published on May 25) on the Net Galley site. The authors are a husband and wife team named Nikoo and Jim McGoldrick, hence the pseudonym. The first chapter, with four dead bad guys and a pretty girl arriving on the scene, let me know that the book would fit the genre.
The hero, Caleb Marlowe, brings personal baggage along with a reputation as a quick-drawing gunman to the town of Elkhorn, Colorado where he plans to settle on a ranch outside the demands of civilization. But then his friend Doc Burnett goes missing just before his daughter Sheila Burnett arrives in town fleeing a marriage engagement her maternal grandfather finagles and insists upon.
The local judge deputizes a reluctant Caleb to track down a band of stagecoach robbers. The robber gang has a strange story and a moral code of its own. Warding against a corrupt sheriff and his followers, searching for the missing doctor, rescuing his kidnapped gutsy New York daughter Sheila, and finding the secret behind the motivation for the stagecoach robbers keeps Caleb busy. Wild animals, gunslingers, and rough terrain keep him in danger.
Tension and gunfights keep the book in the classic western style in this first book of a coming series. Vivid description of the setting as Caleb chases the villains adds to the narrative and pulls the reader into the beauty of the territory as well as its danger. If you are in the mood for an old-fashioned Western, this is a pleasant diversion. When the shooting starts and continues, don’t say I didn’t warn you.