Conrad Browning had money, a manservant and a mission: to find his missing children and meet them for the first time. He’s come as far as Denver, dodged a bullet from a beautiful assassin, and landed in a big buy-in poker tournament against a ruthless heavy-betting cattle baron with a plan of his own – to take this city slicker into the wilderness, and hunt him like an animal.
But Rance McKinney doesn’t know who he is facing. The son of legendary gunman Frank Morgan, Conrad goes by the moniker of the Loner. Now it’s the Loner against McKinney, the hunter and the hunted. And when he’s cornered, the Loner is the most dangerous beast of all…
Still searching for his children, the Loner meets a man who just might be able to shed some light on their whereabouts, but getting McKinney to talk is just one of the problems facing Browning. It also seems that someone else is sending hired assassins to kill him.
The author weaves a tangled plot that moves forward at a tremendous pace and also features a real western character, namely Bat Masterson. As well as organizing the poker tournament, Masterson plays a major role in the outcome of this tale.
The poker game provides some tense and gripping reading but it’s when the Loner becomes the subject of a deadly manhunt that the book really picks up in the action stakes. There are also a couple of surprises in store amid the flying lead and brutal deaths.
For me, this is another strong entry in this excellent series. The author certainly knows how to craft a tale that will capture the readers imagination from the very beginning, and then piles on the suspense making the book difficult to put down until the gunsmoke drifts away from the scene of the final climactic gunfight that resolves most of the story’s plotlines, leaving me eager to read the next book in the series.
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