Better Off Dead

SHAWN O’BRIEN #3

By William W. Johnstone with J.A. Johnstone

Pinnacle Books, March 2016

On the West Texas border a behemoth is bellowing smoke, fire, and death. This monster is the infamous Abaddon Cannon Foundry, whose weapons of war have spread death and destruction around the world – and made a few men in Big Buck, Texas, incredibly rich. Now, a Mexican-born teenager has disappeared into this fortress factory, where men work and sweat as slaves. This boy’s sister wants to learn her brother’s fate, and she happens to know a man named Shawn O’Brien, the Town Tamer.

Shawn rides to Texas to find the missing boy. What he discovers in Big Buck will spark a ferocious, bloody battle with the greatest evil the West has ever known: masters of war who laugh in the face of anyone who defies them. Until Shawn O’Brien raises his six-gun. Then the laughing stops.

The Shawn O’Brien books are a spin-off series from The Brother’s O’Brien series and one of the other brothers will have a major part to play in this book, this being Jacob O’Brien.

Jacob goes undercover into the Foundry and will witness some horrific scenes that illustrate what many imagine Hell to be like. These very descriptive and visual passages bringing to mind the art of painters such as Jacob Isaacsz van Swanenburgh and Pieter Bruegel.

The book also seems to borrow from the steampunk genre too in the clothing that those who support the Foundry wear and the weapons that they are developing. I don’t really want to say any more about those weapons so as not to spoil the story for anyone aiming to read it, but these weapons are of interest to leaders of European countries as it seems conflict there is becoming inevitable.

With the Foundry run by a seemingly madman with an army behind him, never mind weapons of the like the West has never seen before, the odds against the two O’Brien brothers and their small band of allies being able to succeed in their mission is extremely doubtful from the start.

If you want a violent, action packed read where human life is seen as disposable on a madman’s whim, then this very fast paced story should be right at the top of your reading list.