Outlaw Train

by Cameron Judd

Leisure, March 2010

Deputy Luke Cable’s job has gotten a whole lot harder lately. He’s been acting marshal since Marshal Ben Keely left on a trip east—and disappeared. It’s up to Luke to keep the peace, and that’s hard to do since the arrival of the Outlaw Train, a travelling collection of curiosities, including the remains of notorious outlaws. But not all the outlaws in town are dead. Scar Nolan is very much alive. He came to town right after the train pulled in. He’s killed before and unless Luke can stop him he’s aiming to do it again aboard the…Outlaw Train.

Cameron Judd fills this book with a fascinating bunch of characters, many of who are involved in enterprises that don’t turn up that often in westerns. People such as the man with the tattooed ears who owns the Outlaw Train – a rolling museum of dead outlaws and weapons used to kill others. Then there’s the stunning Katrina Haus who claims she can communicate with the dead – a woman who some suspect of being the missing killer Kate Bender. There’s the mysterious man who lives in seclusion above the Emporium, never venturing outside. My favourite is the ex-drunk, Dewitt Stamps, who has now got religion in a big way and is employed as the jailer. And it’s not just people that cause problems for Deputy Luke Cable; what of the severed leg found near the railway tracks?

Cameron Judd combines all these elements, and more, in a very fast moving and difficult to put down story that fuels the imagination. As all his characters come together in the town of Wiles, Kansas, the author has another surprise waiting for the reader which resolves all his storylines in a dramatic and violent conclusion.

I also liked the fact that Cameron Judd included a real person in the story, Kate Bender. Is she the person pretending to be Katrina Haus? That’s something you’ll have to find out for yourself, and hopefully you’ll be as entertained as I was with this book whilst finding out the answer.

I’ve only read a couple of books by Cameron Judd and this one has me very eager to try more.

Bender's Boot

as by Mark Bannerman

A Black Horse Western from Hale, 2004

At a remote inn, Conrad McClure, becomes involved with an evil family and, in particular, the she-devil of a daughter who ensnares men in her murderous web of sensuality. McClure, like so many before him, is trapped. Local vigilantes storm the inn, intent on lynching the entire family. But the killers have fled, taking McClure with them. The evidence left buried in the adjacent orchard is totally damning: twelve bodies, naked and brutally mutilated, including a little girl who was clearly buried alive. But where have the murderers gone, and what is the fate of Conroy McClure?

Mark Bannerman (author Anthony Lewing) has come up with a really tough story here. Not just for it’s brutal storyline - based on a real family and events - but also for some of the themes it covers, such as incest. There is also a death near the end that will be hard for some readers to accept, shocking as it is, it does make for a powerful and memorable part of the book.

Bannerman includes a number of red-herrings that had me wondering as to the identity of one of the characters, then after making the reader believe in one thing throws in a twist to completely throw you off track.

The book begins in the present, goes back into the past – two and a half years before the beginning – before catching up to the present again.

For a Black Horse Western the plot even involves a very graphic sex-scene, although this is important to the storyline. Bannerman also includes a couple of rare, in a western, elements: a hot air balloon and some Great White sharks.

This has to rank up there with the best Black Horse Westerns I’ve read and will certainly have me hunting through my collection for the other books I have by this author.