The Skull of Iron Eyes

By Rory Black

A Black Horse Western from Hale, March 2011

In a remote forested valley, six miners, led by the once famous magician Will Hayes, strike pay dirt. As it turns out, a fortune in golden nuggets is hidden throughout the length of the dense landscape, waiting to be gathered up and taken back to civilization. A small isolated tribe of natives are the miners’ only obstacle but Hayes has a dastardly plan….

All goes well for Hayes and his ruthless followers until they make the mistake of killing a child and casting her body into the river. What none of the miners realize is that the body will be found by the infamous bounty hunter Iron Eyes. He vows to discover who killed the little girl and he won’t stop until he sees justice done….

The above blurb, taken from the back of the book, is a little misleading, as it implies most of the story will be about Iron Eyes’ hunt for the killers of the little girl, in fact this doesn’t happen until about thirty pages from the end. In the earlier parts of the book the author explains the events that lead up to the discovery of the girls body.

Rory Black moves from one set of characters to another chapter by chapter as he brings all these people along their various trails to where they will meet for a final, spectacular, showdown. We follow Hayes and his gang, witness how they use magic to fool the natives into believing they are gods, although not all the Indians believe this to be so. Iron Eyes is tracking a group of outlaws of which two escape and leave Iron Eyes blind. It’s when Iron Eyes recovers enough to follow these two fleeing outlaws that their trail leads to the dead girl.

There’s plenty of action, often fairly graphic in description, and the story moves along at a great pace. There are a couple of sequences that stretch belief a little, but nevertheless make for entertaining reading. The finish of the book doesn’t seem to end that well for Iron Eyes, and left me wanting to know more, so lets hope it isn’t that long before another Iron Eyes book hits the shelves.

The Skull of Iron Eyes is the fourteenth book in the series, and is officially released at the end of this month, although it should be available from the usual Internet sources now.