Peter Brandvold has written well over one hundred action westerns under his own name and his pseudonym, Frank Leslie. Born and raised in North Dakota, he has lived all over the West. He currently lives in western Minnesota with his dog. Follow him at Amazon and here peterbrandvold.blogspot.comand here: facebook.com/peter.brandvold.
This is the first "Gideon Hawk" book I've read by Brandvold. It's not the origin story so I'm not sure of all the details that led to the character's formation. I do know he lost his wife and child and now hunts down evildoers and puts bullets in them. He's a cold-blooded fellow in this book, and I'm going to have to go back and read some of the earlier books in the series to get a better feel for him.
As always with Brandvold, there's lots of action and lots of little local details that really place you in the setting. Desert Mountains in this case.
This book has a bonus, a longish short story about a character named the Rio Concho Kid. I liked this character a lot in the story, which had some nice twists and turns and a really cool villain. Highly recommended.