Wild Western Action

He’s got a date with the devil. She has one with the hangman. Joe Noose, former bounty hunter now temporary deputy U.S. Marshal, agrees to escort notorious female gunslinger Bonny Kate Valance from Jackson Hole over the Teton Pass and to Victor, Idaho. It’s a trail 15 miles long, every inch marked by angst. A frenetically paced adventure, Eric Red’s Hanging Fire (Pinnacle, $7.99) keeps the reader turning pages, one calamity after another. Joe Noose has to keep Bonny alive long enough for her to make her date with the gallows. Throw in a crazed ex-lover, a single-minded Arizona sheriff, stir in a forest fire and Noose’s pure determination and sense of duty, bake for 299 pages and what emerges is brilliant. Filled with tantalizing descriptions and wild action, Hanging Fire is indeed a classic Western, but with a new twist.

—Melody Groves, author of Black Range Revenge