Brooks adds another action-packed saddle yarn to his more than 20 westerns and historicals. Set in 1876 in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, and infused with Old West staples (bad whiskey, back shooters, and low morals), this oater follows flinty-eyed John Henry Cole, a hardcase frontier detective with the Ike Kelly Agency whose conscience and firearms hamper his attempts to solve the murders of three young prostitutes in the employ of Ike Kelly’s former sweetheart, now a high-class bordello owner, who wanted Ike for the job but got John Henry instead. John Henry is a tenacious, smart, acerbic, sneaky, and ruthless man who discovers in nascent Deadwood an insidious conspiracy of corruption, extortion, and murder. Knowing that the local law won’t help him, he finds an unexpected ally in a mysterious fed who gleefully makes up the law as he goes along. Loaded with hot lead and gun smoke, this western also has humor, suspense, twists, and a puzzling mystery for John Henry to pursue as he’s shot up by robbers, bounty hunters, a vengeful Mexican family, and a cold-blooded killer. Well-crafted side plots add depth to the story and to the protagonist, particularly as he steadies a consumptive and deadly Doc Holliday and shares a cell with a drunken, foul-mouthed Calamity Jane. (Mar.)
