Coyote

By Lee Clinton

The Crowood Press, June 2018

A family is brutally murdered and their homestead burnt to the ground. The bodies are so badly disfigured that identity is difficult to determine, but one of the daughters is known to be missing. Is it eighteen-year-old Grace Mayfield or her younger sister, Chrissy?

The missing Mayfield girl must now be found and the killers brought to justice. Some say it was the work of renegade Cheyenne. Sheriff August ‘Gus’ Ward has his doubts, but evidence is scant.

When the mysterious shooting of a stock agent on the streets of Laramie is linked to those who may have been responsible, Gus is faced with the savage reality that justice may not be served unless he is willing to take matters into his own hands. If he does, is he still a man of the law or has he crossed the line to become an executioner, and no better than those he is willing to kill?

Lee Clinton creates superb atmosphere in the opening chapter that is both gripping and terrifying as the Mayfield family meet their pitiless destiny. This horrific mood continues as Gus searches the ravaged homestead for human remains.

Frustration is another well written emotion Lee Clinton excels at which Gus and his search party must deal with when hunting for the missing girl. Gus must also fight with these feelings whilst trying to prove who’s responsible for the savage murders of the Mayfield family and when trying to discover the motive for these killings. When finding the one survivor of this massacre there’s the challenge of trying to bring her out of her shell, a dark place she’s withdrawn to that seems to have robbed her of her ability to speak.

Lee Clinton is a pseudonym used by Australian author Leigh Alver and with his seventh Black Horse Western he once again proves he’s a writer to be reckoned with. His pacing is terrific, his characters well defined, dialogue and emotional content believable and his action scenes brutally real.

The book closes with Gus having to make the decision outlined at the end of the blurb and this makes for a dramatic and exciting ending that didn’t finish the story in quite the way I expected, adding a welcome concluding twist.