West Texas

by Al Sarrantonio

Lt. Thomas Mullin, retired against his will but almost glad to be free of the searing dusty desert around Fort Davis. A hard life in a hard place for a black man in a white man's cavalry. The US Cavalry was glad to be rid of him, too .. until a US Senator's son disappears in the desert and someone realizes that Mullin was the best tracker around. Mullin quickly discovers that quite a few travelers and cowboys have recently disappeared without a trace in the exact same area. Here was a problem that no self-respecting reader of the Strand Magazine could ignore. No devotee as religious as Mullin could pass by a mystery as strange as this. Why, it would curl the hair of Sherlock Holmes himself .. Consider the An empty, desolate, and inhospitable area where no patrols have found any trace of the missing men. A mystery without a scrap of evidence to examine. Unless you happen to have devoured the methods of the great sleuth of Baker Street, or happen to have a logical and brilliant mind able to piece together scraps of seemingly unrelated information and find a pattern . But what do you do when that pattern points to the impossible? And what do you do when the Senator hires drunken Pinkerton detectives to help you with the case? And, finally, what do you do when you've solved the puzzle and stand in the broiling sun facing a killer stranger and more deadly than any found in the pages of the Strand?

Genres: Westerns, Audiobook

160 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1991

About the author

Al Sarrantonio was an American horror and science fiction writer, editor and publisher who authored more than 50 books and 90 short stories. He also edited numerous anthologies.

Reviews

[Marsha Valance · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sarrantonio offers us a very implausible western-an African-American Civil War veteran, retired from the cavalry, is hired as a scout to search for the missing son of a U.S. senator in the West Texas desert of the 1890s. Because Lt. Thomas Mullen is a fan of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories in the British "Strand Magazine" (which he has mailed to him from New York City), he employs the Holmesian method of "scientific deduction", along with his familiarity with the local Comanches and Apaches and their land, to track what proves to be a serial killer who mutilates his victims and their horses. Despite its basic implausibility, WEST TEXAS succeeds both as historical mystery and as credible western, strictly on the author's vivid development of characters and landscape. The driven, self-educated Lt. Mullen, whose sense of order permitted him to rise to officer rank in a white army, and his quarry, the tortured serial killer, come to life with believable motivations.

[Isha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the idea of a serial killer thriller set in the Wild West. I don't particularly enjoy Westerns but I did this one because it's fast paced and did not spend to much time trying to be atmospheric. I didn't think much of the book when I found it in a swap (no book cover so I did not have an idea about the premise) but boy did I get hooked after the first chapter.

[Jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Long on prose but short on plot, I mostly enjoyed the book. It kinda reminded me of a beautifully shot 85-minute movie. There were too many plot lines for him to do any of them real justice in the small amount of space he gave himself.

[Chuck Byrd · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars..
A good read...

[Louischa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not worth reading. A total failure.