LAST STAND AT LITTLE CREEK.

LAST STAND AT LITTLE CREEK by CHRISTOPHER CAIN.

BACK COVER BLURB: The aging town marshall John Walker is drawn from his comfortable near retirement in a small town in rural Wyoming to try and solve a shocking murder. Racing against time to prevent a border dispute, between two local cattle barons, from turning into a full blown range war, he attempts to tread the grey line between peace keeper and law enforcer.

Set in 1880, this powerfully gripping tale of love, family and rivalry will drag you into the bleak reality of the 'wild' West. Brilliantly interweaving history and adventure to create new, believable historical fiction. 

FIRST SENTENCE {Chapter 1}: He rides slowly towards the town, quiet, purposeful, menacing, eyes never still as he scans his surroundings.

MEMORABLE MOMENT {Page 136}: He looks across the slopping mud, dispassionately watching as the town's run off ditch overflows, turning the main street into a miniature river. Something overrides his morose contemplation, a sound from behind, unthinkingly he spins and crouches, one hand reaching for his pistol.

MY THOUGHTS: A debut novel. Some way removed from the 'Cowboys and Indians' so loved by my late granddad and yet not enough so that it was totally unrecognisable. 

Feeling more authentic than the 'Westerns' of old. Yes, there is more of a storyline, the characters are more defined, the author going some way to get away from the image of two professional gunslingers facing each other down a dusty 'street', of the bar fight in which you are guaranteed some cowboy or other will come sailing through the doors of a saloon. And yet still I feel there is no way of getting past the fact that here is a story that, despite the authors efforts, will probably appeal more to men than women.

Powerfully descriptive, graphically violent but not what I thought of as overly gratuitous. The author does a great job in setting the scene, painting a vividly gritty picture in which an ageing marshal, John Walker, a veteran of a 'Indian war' some fifteen years past, finds himself the centre of a feud between landowners, the Mayweather and Baxter families. A feud made all the more complex by the fact that Walker is betrothed to Mayweather daughter, Belle.

My favourite aspect of the novel, and, in my opinion, the main thing to set it apart from many others of its genre, I found myself really liking Belle. Mentally strong, in many ways physically tough and yet at the same time merely grateful that in Walker, a man 'who may not beat her', she had 'at least chosen someone who is honourable and hard working'. Its however sad to say that without exception the rest of the female characters (of whom there aren't many), though perhaps of their time and place, weren't so well written.

And therein lies my difficulty. Ultimately a novel I enjoyed much more than I thought I would but, far stronger on plot than characterisation, I personally felt that it could have benefited from being that much longer, the characters that bit more padded out. 

Still, ending, if not exactly on a cliff-hanger, wide-open to a sequel, I'm hoping we hear more of Christopher Cain.