NEW START WITH NEW SERIES: STEVE HOCKENSMITH'S HIRED GUNS

My friend Steve Hockensmith had been yearning to do a traditional western for years. He sort of wrote several in a stealth/hybrid form with his Holmes On The Range series, featuring cowboy brothers Old Red and Big Red Amlingmeyer, who operate as a Sherlock and Watson in the west of the 1990s. In their last case, Hunters Of The Dead they work with three other operatives for The Western Detective Agency. Steven has now written a full blown powder burner by spinning off these Hired Guns.

He introduces (or reintroduces) our three heroes in the middle of of a touchy situation in Mexico where they are pinned between bandits. We get Osum Diehl, a former Army officer who has a mind for strategy that mainly occurs when he is in the middle of a situation than before riding into it. Ira Hoop, an ex-buffalo soldier who served under Diehl, proves cunning and resourceful in the situations Diehl often puts them in. Eskamininzin an Apache who worked with the two as a scout, is deliberate in thought, stealthy in action.

After they get out of their scrape in Mexico, the agency assigns them to a mining town in Arizona Territory. A small group of miners have hired them help them deal with The American Consolidated Mining Company run by Kingsley LeMay, the unscrupulous chairman of the company with an odd attachment to his pet daschund, Thomas Beck, an ex-Texas Ranger who shares a history with the boys, acts as his enforcer.

Hockensmith takes this classic western set-up and proceeds deliver his own story sense and style while still servinging up everything we want from a traditional oater. The plot starts out as a tournament chess game with Diehl understanding the politics and legalities of the situation, countering LeMay and Beck and drawing them out. As the story escalates with growing stakes it turns into speed chess. The gunfights are well thought out and executed, reflecting the personalities of each Hired Gun who who uses brains as much as bullets. Like the Holmes series he applies an earth, lived in authenticity to his western world. He also uses his brand of humor with three heroes to trade barbs.

You can feel the fun Steve Hockensmith has in working directly with this genre. With Hired Guns, he sets up a series with three entertaining heroes who each carry a history he can mine. The second book, No Hallowed Ground, will be coming out in October 8th. I look forward to saddling up with them again.,