Longarm and the Outlaw Empress

Longarm Giant #25

by Tabor Evans

After thwarting a band of stagecoach bandits, Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long, honor-bound to bring the bandits to justice, arrives in the lawless town of Zamora where he must go up against one of the most powerful women in the West. Original.

Genres: Westerns

304 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published October 31, 2006

About the author

Tabor Evans is the author of the long-running Longarm western series, featuring the adventures of Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long. Tabor Evans, is a house pseudonym used by a number of authors. The pseudonym of Tabor Evans would begin in the 1970s when Lou Cameron established it for the Jove Books publishing label. Lou Cameron helped create the character and wrote a number of the early books in the series. The first book was published in 1978. Other authors known to have written books in the series include Melvin Marshall, Will C. Knott, Frank Roderus, Chet Cunningham, J. Lee Butts, Gary McCarthy, James Reasoner, Jeffrey M. Wallmann, Peter Brandvold and Harry Whittington. In addition there are 29 "Giant" editions published as well.

The Longarm series is a mainstay of the "adult western" genre which arose in the 1970s. These books are distinguished from classical westerns by the inclusion of more explicit sex and violence.

Reviews

[Edwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Longarm Giant novels are about 50% longer than the traditional Longarm series books which gives author James Reasoner, writing as Tabor Evans, some breathing room to pen a team-up that includes Longarm plus Jessie and Ki from the LONE STAR series of Adult Westerns. The protagonists are unaware that they are both following clues from unrelated crimes that are leading them to a Nevada ghost town called Zamora that has been secretly repurposed into a haven for outlaws by a beautiful and wealthy Prussian outlaw, the titular Empress. The author nicely weaves the two narratives into a cohesive story with a terrific climax when the team-up culminates in Zamora. Reasoner is a dependably adept and entertaining writer providing some fine prose, plotting, and dialog. The only thing that I didn’t care for much was the intrusive obligatory sex scenes, although even those were written pretty well. I really enjoyed the novel and give it five stars.