Widowmaker Jones

By Brett Cogburn

Pinnacle, August 2016

With a bag full of gold dust, Newt “Widowmaker” Jones is set for life. Then he makes his first mistake, trusting a cheerful stranger. By dawn the stranger – Javier Cortina, the son of the famous Texas border bandit Juan “Red” Cortina – is gone. So is the gold. So are Newt’s horse and even his fearsome Winchester rifle. It’s enough to make a man want vengeance. And vengeance will be Newt’s.

Newt chases Cortina into Mexico, where the man is legendary for the horses he’s stolen, the women he’s bedded, and the men he’s killed. As for Newt, he has a unique talent for choosing the wrong partners, from an angry, addled judge named Roy Bean to a brother and sister pair of circus Gypsies, Fonzo Grey and Buckshot Annie. The more Newt pursues the cunning and deadly Cortina, the angrier he gets, until somewhere on the border the whole crazy journey explodes into an all-out battle of bullets and blood….

This is the first book I have read by Brett Cogburn and it certainly left me eager to hunt out his previous works and I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for any future publications, especially in this series (the second book Buzzard Bait is already out and a third, Gunpowder Express, is listed for a February release).

Cogburn has created a wonderful set of characters for this book and switches between Newt and the Gypsies as misfortunes befall them, these hardships putting them on converging trails. Cogburn’s portrayal of Judge Roy Bean is top class, he’s a colourful character whose court hearings had me laughing out loud, and he certainly painted some vivid imagery in my mind’s eye, such as riding his horse with a cockerel perched behind him.

Newt is a great lead character who earned the name “Widowmaker” (a nickname he hates) as a fist-fighter and due to this he is recognized every now and again, usually at the most inappropriate moments.

Cogburn's prose is extremely readable, and he mixes plot twists, action and plenty of humour perfectly making this a very enjoyable read.