A Dark Dawn in Texas

By Richard Smith

The Crowood Press, September 2017

On her deathbed, Laura Peters shocks her son by belatedly revealing that his uncle did not die alongside Paul’s father in the bloody confrontation at Gettysburg in July 1863. She urges Paul to ride west in a quest to find his relative who holds a guilty secret from those dreadful Civil War days. With mixed emotions he takes up the challenge, eventually arriving in the Texas town of Ongar Ridge, only to find himself accused of murdering the man he had been seeking.

Richard Smith’s third Black Horse Western and the second I’ve read. His first book, Revenge for a Hanging proved to be an excellent read so I had high hopes this would be a match for that in quality and entertainment value and it certainly turned out to be so.

Like in the previous book of Richard Smith’s I read this one also features a court case as Paul Peters is put on trial for killing the man he was seeking – although at the time no-one knows this was Paul’s uncle. This all leads to the reader having to wonder how Paul will ever find out what his uncle’s secret was and it soon becomes apparent that Paul will really struggle to discover why his uncle was killed and by whom.

Richard Smith includes plenty of mystery elements as to the killing of Paul's uncle that kept me turning the pages and there were soon a variety of suspects, people who seemed to want Paul out of the way too, but are these for the same reasons his uncle was killed?

There’s mistrust too. Paul only shares his relationship to the dead man with the marshal and it isn’t long before the lawman’s deputy becomes a suspect throwing doubt on whether Paul should even be trusting Marshal Rowland.

The author tells his story in an easy to read style that builds through a vicious beating, ambush and plenty of gunplay, to a final violent confrontation in increasing pace. Along the way you’ll meet a great set of characters of both sexes and those that fall into the good and bad categories of people. Even though Paul often decides to give up on his seemingly impossible quest to discover why his uncle died events keep him in Ongar Ridge and the truth finally emerges in a shocking revelation that I didn’t see coming.

So, as you can probably guess, I’ve been left looking forward to Richard Smith’s next book and can only add that if you’ve never read any of his work then this one could be the perfect place to introduce yourself to his writing.

Also available as an ebook.