Winchester

The Landon Saga #11

By Tell Cotten

Solstice publishing, November 2018

Winchester Landon is on his way to the nearest Army outpost when he finds an injured Apache. Against his better judgment, he decides to help.

His choice has lingering consequences. Along the way, Winchester gets tangled up with three men looking for revenge, two dishonorable scouts, a talkative gunfighter, a war chief out for blood, and a woman he’s not sure he can trust.

We first met Winchester in the previous book in the Landon Saga and as many of Tell Cotten’s fans hoped he now gets to star in his own story. This tale does continue a couple of storylines from book ten but if you haven’t read that Tell gives enough information about events in Midway that you’ll easily understand what is going on in this one.

Like all the books in this excellent series this story is extremely fast-paced and contains some terrific dialogue and well-drawn characters, especially Choctaw. Action scenes are vividly written and the plot is nicely thought out, offering a neat twist near the end that involves Winchester having nerves of steel. 

Winchesters involvement with the woman mentioned in the blurb forms a major part of this story and his growing feelings for her see him challenging his motivations and job as an army scout and this complication kept me turning the pages alone as I had to find out how this would work out.

Winchester isn’t a long book, the print version clocking in at 164 pages and all too soon I found myself at the end and am left hoping Mr. Cotten doesn’t keep us waiting another year to find out what happens next – yeap, the author leaves a couple of threads hanging to ensure you’ll have to buy the next book in the series, but then all of us who have read Tell’s work would do that anyway as you can guarantee you’ll be getting a top-class read.