Blood River

By Will Black

Crowood Press, August 2017

Gold was becoming harder to find as panners by the hundreds swarmed to any site where even the smallest nugget was found. One mine was still operating north of the Sierra Nevadas. And that was the problem. Transporting the gold down narrow, sandy, and rocky trails, wagons were easy targets for outlaws.

The Pinkerton Agency was charged with the security of a large haul of gold. But they had a daring plan. If it worked, 500 gold bars would make it East. If it failed, all was lost. Unknown to them, the Greeley gang had inside knowledge of their plan and were intent of stealing the gold.

At any cost.

I really enjoyed the last Will Black book I read, Death Comes Easy, so I was looking forward to this one and it more than matched the entertainment value of that previous story.

Will Black has a knack for creating interesting characters and plunging them into ingenious plots, and the plan that the Pinkerton’s have come up with is as fantastic as it could be foolhardy. The method of transporting the gold containing many edge of the seat moments.

The author regularly switches between the different groups of people fighting for possession of the gold as he tells his story that is filled with danger, double-cross, gunplay and deadly weather, before everything comes to a nail-biting and satisfying climax that could see many more folk decide to help themselves to the gold, which adds even more problems for Sheriff Brad Morgan to deal with.

Will Black is a pseudonym used by Adam Smith, and on the strength of this book, and others I’ve read by him, he has firmly established himself as one of my favourite Black Horse Western writers.