A SHORT ROPE FOR A TALL MAN

CARSON STONE

A SHORT ROPE FOR A TALL MAN

By Nate Morgan

Pinnacle Books, May 2023

The most wanted man in the West, Big Bob McGraw has earned his reputation as a thief and killer. With a gang of trigger-happy desperadoes willing to do his bidding, McGraw has robbed banks, stagecoaches, and railroads, raised hell ravaging towns, and left bodies littering the streets in his wake.

Carson Stone rode with McGraw’s gang exactly once, minding their horses during a bank robbery, before quitting. But with the marshal of El Paso, Texas, gunned down in cold blood as the bandits escaped, he’d been judged guilty by association. To clear his name, Carson teams up with bounty hunter Colby Tate to track down the outlaws – now scattered across the frontier – and bring them to justice. And Carson must convince his partner to bring McGraw in alive or he’ll never escape the shadow of the hangman’s noose.

Packed with a great set of characters, this book pulled me in from the opening scenes. Stone’s task seems almost impossible even when he teams up with a couple of bounty hunters as McGraw’s whereabouts is unknown. Will he be able to persuade the bounty hunters to bring McGraw in alive? These questions, and more, kept me turning the pages. 

Nate Morgan, a pseudonym for Victor Gischler, includes plenty of gunplay that is fairly graphic in its description. He doesn’t give Stone an easy ride either as he will soon have to face the reality of double-cross – this twist adding a neat unforeseen surprise element to the story as long as you haven’t read the first published Carson Stone book, Dead Man’s Trail.

Dead Man’s Trail was published in December 2022. I read and reviewed it here. I wondered then if Pinnacle had made a mistake in the order they put these two books out, and I’m convinced of it now. This is such a shame as Dead Man’s Trail has a lot of references to the storyline of A Short Rope for a Tall Man and reading them as published really spoilt the twists in A Short Rope for a Tall Man. If you have both these books but have yet to read them, may I suggest you read them in the wrong order to get the most enjoyment out of them, or just think of it as a prequel.

Having read them both, I can only hope that we haven’t heard the last of Carson Stone. 

American readers can get a copy here
British readers can get a copy here

DEAD MAN'S TRAIL

CARSON STONE 1

By Nate Morgan

Pinnacle Books, December 2022

Former thief and wanted man Carson Stone dreams of a peaceful life on a ranch built by his own hands, but dreams don’t always come without a steep price. To earn a stake, Carson rides west to collect the reward on a claim-jumper. The land is beautiful, but times are hard as the territory is ravaged by the latest Indian war and a mining boom gone bust.

When Stone steps in to defend a family ambushed by murdering marauders, he makes a terrifying discovery: one of the hired killers carries a death list full of names and dollar amounts. But the names on this list belong to upstanding citizens, not criminals. When the local sheriff is gunned down in broad daylight, Carson takes on the one job he never wanted – pinning on a lawman’s tin star to protect the innocent.

A gang of ruthless killers are storming back to finish their work – and Carson Stone has just moved to the top of the death list.

The story begins with a very rich man, Bill Cartwright, hiring a vicious group of cold-hearted killers and handing them the death list. We aren’t told why he wants the people on the list killed. One of the assassins is a beautiful woman, who introduces herself as just Kate, and Cartwright decides to keep her by his side. If you’ve read many westerns, it isn’t too hard to work out why Cartwright wants people killed, and the author soon exposes that reason, but nothing is straight-forward as it seems Kate is playing Cartwright and double-cross is looming.

The author introduces many other great characters, Carson and the bounty hunter he rides alongside are just two. It seems they also have history with Kate, who they know as Lady Pain. There are other characters that seem to come from Carson’s past which began to make me wonder if this is really the first book in the Carson Stone series as is announced on the cover, but more of that later.

The story is told at pace and the tension mounts as the author reveals the double-crosses to the reader but not the characters. Carson also finds himself falling in love as he becomes the centre of a love triangle. Carson doesn’t have much time for the ladies though as there’s too much killing to try to stop. From crooked lawmen to the psychopathic Englishman who likes using a knife on his victims, and it looks like Carson’s lady friends are in his sights. 

Flimsy, desperate plans are put into place and just as quickly discarded before Carson finds himself facing Cartwright in what turns out to be a very bloody final showdown. That’s not the end though, as there’s still the Englishman and Lady Pain to deal with.

This book was a great introduction to a new western hero that I think everyone who likes westerns will enjoy. Nate Morgan is a pseudonym for Victor Gischler, an author who is perhaps better known for his work with Marvel Comics.

Due to the amount of backstory touched on between various characters I do wonder if Dead Man’s Trail is really the first book in the series. A second book, A Short Rope for a Tall Man is due out in April 2023, so, unless that book is a flashback tale then it would seem that the publisher may have put them out in the wrong order as the blurb for the second book indicates it tells the story about how all the characters in this one get to know each other.