Thursday 22 October 2020

BLOOD OF RENEGADES


THE LONER
number 10 of 15
By J.A. Johnstone
Pinnacle, July 2011

The damsel is in distress, or so it seems to Conrad Browning. On his way across the wide, tall Utah territory to California, the Loner meets a beautiful Mormon girl on the run from a forced wedding – and the gun-toting faithful trying to hunt her down. But there are two sides to every story – and the ones you don’t hear are the ones that can get you killed.

The runaway bride has a little history of her own. Soon, the Loner touches off a storm of unholy gunfire, drawing blood from an outlaw and a death sentence from a patriarch. Among murders and Mormons, Bibles and bullets, the Loner finds himself riding to a wedding – a ceremony he intends to crash with a vengeance…

Browning’s search for his missing children is interrupted by the runaway Mormon girl and the trouble she brings to the Loner. This is a story of the younger generation not wanting to follow the path of their elders. The Loner gets caught up in the middle of this as he decides to help the youngsters escape the grip of the Mormon leader and his band of Avenging Angels. 

There is plenty of exciting action that doesn’t always involve gunplay, such as a very different method of escape across the salt flat of the likes I can’t remember reading about before. The Loner also has to deal with unfounded jealousy that could see him killed by one of those on the side he his trying to help. 

The author is an expert at pacing and creating tension and that made it hard for me to put this book down as I just had to find out what happened next. The final battle proving to be spectacular in its destructive power. 

When the Loner finally gets to continue with his search for his children the author springs a surprising twist to the tale that instantly had me wanting to read the next book in this terrific series.


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