By: Peter Brandvold Publisher: Berkley Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 208 Publication Date: September 06, 2005 Studio: Berkley
Product Description: Deputy U.S. Marshal Gideon Hawk was respected throughout the Territory as a lawman of principle--until Three Fingers Ned Meade threw him a curve. Meade killed Hawk's ten-year-old boy, and the grisly act drove Hawk's grief-stricken wife to hang herself. Now, robbed of kin, Hawk sets out on a brutal quest to find the man responsible--at any cost.
A flawed first book in a promising series ^ Peter Brandvold's Rogue Lawman opens with an atmospheric scene of a trio of lawmen trailing villains across sage covered badlands. They track the bad men to a ramshackle saloon and a quick and dirty shootout ensues.
Before too long, one of those lawmen, Marshal Gideon Hawk, finds his family wiped out by a desperado seeking revenge. Gideon apprehends the scoundrel and brings him to trial, only to have justice denied. This leads him down the dark path to revenge.
Rogue Lawman is reminiscent of the best of the spaghetti westerns. A gritty and violent western chock full of unusual characters: a vicious dwarf and guys with names like Three Fingers Ned Meade, Crazy Chuck and Beaver Face Pyle. The writing is effective and descriptive, which is an improvement on the writing of the last Brandvold book I read, .45-Caliber Revenge. The author has a real knack for describing shoot-outs clearly and loads them with suspense.
It clocks in at a slim two hundred pages, but I have to say that it still felt like there was a bit of padding to the book. There was a fifty page stretch detailing Meade's activity after attacking the Marshal's family: an exciting bank robbery that bleeds into a shoot out between Ned's gang and Hawk's posse in the middle of a town.
While this set piece is one of the highlights of the book, it is also immediately forgotten and not mentioned again. When Meade goes to trial it is for the murder of Hawk's son only. He is released for lack of evidence and freed. No one seems to remember his part in a bank robbery, or the very public gun battle, which left several dead on both sides of the law, just three pages before. It seems it would have been better for the story if Hawk wounded and captured Meade immediately after his son's death. Then Meade's acquittal and release would have been plausible. The bank robbery felt like it was clumsily wedged in after the fact to increase the page count.
Also, to me the big baddie just didn't seem bad enough. He was literally jumping at shadows throughout the book. It was hard to believe that a man that skittish could even manage to be that bad. It could be that he wasn't skittish over all, that he was just terrified of Hawk. But if that is the case, Brandvold never explained why Meade would suddenly be so afraid of the lawman. So far as the reader knows, Meade had never met Hawk prior to when he murders Hawk's son and never mentions that Hawk has any sort of legendary reputation.
In the end, I liked the bleak tone of the book and thought the action was well done (especially that terrific opening scene). However, the large plot hole made me feel like the book was rushed. I may pick up the sequel, to see if Brandvold can keep the stuff I like and improve what I didn't like, but I'd have a tough time recommending this first one to anyone except an avid reader of westerns.
Action packed ^ This is the first in a new series from Peter Brandvold featuring Deputy Marshal Gideon Hawk.
Peter Brandvold paints a savage picture of the west, in fact many times his descriptive words created vivid images within my mind. His bad guys are vile and his hero, Gideon Hawk, is definitely an anti-hero who can be as cruel as those he's hunting.
If you like westerns with obvious lines between the good and the bad then maybe this isn't for you but, if like me, you enjoy the more savage types of western fiction then get this book now! This book is filled with one violent confrontation after another, tough and at times sadistic action, that will satisfy anyone who likes brutal and bloody.
Peter Brandvold has produced a new western character that has me counting down the days until the release of the second book in this series - Deadly Prey.
A masterfully grim and bleak Western ^ Deputy US Marshall Gideon Henry Hawk slowly turns vigilante and outlaw in the wake of tragedy, turning his back on the ideals of law and order he believed in.
As has been noted elsewhere, a character in the book is named DeRosso. Appropriate, since this novel is in the spirit of pulp and paperback author H.A. DeRosso's noirish Westerns, Brandvold drawing his characters and situations with bold, economic but evocative strokes that lift's it far above the sort of cheap paperback action-adventure Western the bare bones description of the plot resembles.
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