A Tale of Vengeance and Redemption

Lucas Fume, Larry D. Sweazy’s new hero in Vegeance at Sundown (Berkley, $7.99)  is rotting in a Tennessee prison for killing his friend and business partner, John Barlow.

A seemingly miraculous jailbreak instigated by Zeke Henry, a black man in jail for raping a white woman, frees John. Zeke admits someone helped him, and that someone sends Lucas a cryptic message that John Barlow lives. With Zeke’s help, John tracks Barlow to St. Louis where he extracts his revenge on John, Charlotte, and the rest of Barlow’s villainous crew. While the plot is so incredulous as to make the reader wince, the skill of Sweazy’s writing and the masterful way he constructs word pictures for the reader to build in his or her mind, make the book a joy to read.

—Thomas P. Nicholson author of Revenge of the Stolen Dove