Whiplash

By Owen G. Irons

Hale, July 2013

Sandy Rivers was taking a well-deserved rest in the trail head town of Durant, Colorado when the dying man staggered to his saloon table. The injured man had been whiplashed half to death and then finished off with a knife in his back. He had come to warn Sandy of something but died before he could finish what he had to say.

If Sandy had let that be an end to things, he would not have been pursued across the desert, shot at, charmed and lied to by a beautiful woman, then witnessed the death of his home ranch’s owner, before finally meeting the killer with the whip.

This starts out as a fairly straight-forward storyline, but when Sandy heads out to stop the killer with the whip the plot begins to twist and turn with each new person he meets. It gets even more bewildering when Sandy finds himself riding alongside the daughter of his now dead ex-employer. All this serves to hook the reader and makes sure this is a difficult book to put down before discovering just what is really going on.

Owen G. Irons – a pseudonym used by Paul Lederer – has come up with a very entertaining read. The book is fast moving from the start and his descriptions paint vivid imagery within the minds’ eye. His characters will have you rooting for them, or not depending on which side of right or wrong they walk. And who will easily forget the beat-up old horse Sandy finds himself riding?

So, once more, I’m left looking forward to the next book by this author – under whichever of his pseudonyms it is published.