“Another excellent installment of Cotton’s Ranger series“

NO MAJOR SPOILERS

This time our cast of characters include a set of twins (one good, one not), a Ranger, one dirty sheriff (who dies shortly before the book begins), a whore (desperately in love with one of the twins), a bounty hunter from Chicago, and an inept posse (for crying out loud, they lose their horses twice to groups they outnumber) all being spurred on by the quest for stolen government gold.

The Carly twins are on the run. One has killed a crooked sheriff and the other doesn’t want to watch his brother hang. When Ranger Sam Burrack finds his quarry one of them is dead. But which one? I waffled back and forth through the whole book as to which twin had survived. All the players in the book had the same problem. Is the survivor Blake? If so, he knows where the stolen gold is hidden. Is the survivor Able? Would the outlaw Blake have shared the secret of the gold with his brother?

Dead Man’s Canyon is book 12 of Ralph Cotton’s Ranger series. I’ve not read any of the previous books and did not find this a disadvantage. It read as its own book.

As I’ve said previously, I’m a judge a book by its cover girl. Well, I’m in recovery. I never thought I would like western type books but now I find myself searching for more. I always assumed they would be boring, dusty and filled only with bar fights and showdowns at noon. Wrong. Very wrong. I’ve gotten my ears on several very good western-style books, or at least what I consider western.

This is definitely on my re-read list and I’m keeping an eye out for the other 37 in the series. Boy, that Sam Burrack is one busy Ranger.

Dead Man’s Canyon gets a 4.5 on my bookometer.

 

Reviewed by:

Teresa Maiden

Added 7th July 2015