Lady Outlaw

THE JUDGE #12

By Hank Edwards

Harper, April 1994

If it wasn’t for a bunch of renegade Pawnee, Clay Torn might have made it to Lonesome Pine sooner and avoided the wild shootout that left three men and Sheriff Logan dead. All because Miss Chancey Lane stirred up a ruckus and chose jail and justice over outlaw suitor Ash Wheeler. Ready to strike again, Wheeler doesn’t care who he has to kill to get her back.

Now Torn wants something, too – to see Ash Wheeler behind bars. Using the pretty, deadly Chancey as bait, Torn rides across the meanest country in Nebraska to smoke out the infamous Blue River Gang and nail the most wanted man on the western frontier.

Book twelve is the last of The Judge series. Would it bring the run to a satisfactory end or just be another fast-paced action-packed entry in this enjoyable series by Hank Edwards and vanish from the shelves with no indication that this would be the final book?

You don’t need to have read any of the other books to enjoy this one, as it is a self-contained tale like all the rest in the series, only linked by a single story thread that runs through the entire series, that of Clay Torn’s hopes of finding his missing fiancée as he travels the west dealing out his kind of justice as a federal judge. Would he finally discover what had happened to her in this book? We do discover that Torn is now beginning to think he may never find her, and in Chancey Lane there might just be a woman to replace his intended.

Hank Edwards is a pseudonym, ten of the books written by Jason Manning. Robert W. Broomall writing books two and four. Like all the other entries in this series it is a very entertaining read that sees Torn having to make some tough decisions and deal with some brutal outlaws by using his gun rather than a gavel. 

For me, and other fans of The Judge books, it's a shame it doesn’t bring the series to a close. Presumably the publisher decided to bring the series to an end after this book had been written so that the author couldn’t make it obvious this was the last one. 

Overall, this series has provided me with hours of reading pleasure and I believe many other western readers will have enjoyed it too.