I’m counting this book, which I picked up in Davenport, Iowa, in 2024, as my first book read for 2026 even though I finished it on December 30, 2025. As I mentioned, I flip that particular calendar sometime the week after Christmas, and these days, finishing a book right before the turning of the year puts me in a bit of a spot because the library’s Winter Reading Challenge starts on January 2, so I can’t use books I started before January 2 for it. So what do I read for the next two days? I’m leery of picking something up that I cannot finish within the two days, so I guess I’ll nibble at some of the books on the chairside table which I won’t be finishing any time soon.
At any rate, this is a one-off Western from an author whose other works are fantasy, science fiction, or a blend of the two, so it is a departure. Dalton Phillips comes to Spider Rock, Arizona, in 1848, and he’s a bit of a Perry Sue in that he’s formally educated, a great piano player, the fastest gun in town, and a very good gambler. He has come to live with his uncle, the local preacher, but they conflict because of the aforementioned talents the man has. But he has a couple of fatal flaws or drawbacks, including consumption (one of the reasons he came to Arizona, the other being he’s a hellraiser), and he likes to drink and to carouse with the ladies of the saloons in which he likes to play piano, to drink, and to gamble. So he guns down a couple of people, develops a reputation, and then….
Well, he is unlucky in getting caught with the daughter of the Big Boss Man in town, and he is unlucky in trying to defend one of the ladies of the saloons to whom he feels a special connection. The latter leads him to being bested by a number of banditos and taken into the desert, shot, and left for dead, but brought in by a tribe of Apaches, including one he’d humiliated in town–and who remembers and resents. But Perry Sue, I mean, Dalton, is adopted by the chief, woos and weds the chief’s daughter, only to see them slaughtered by US Calvary led by a particularly odious colonel….
Well, afterwards, Dalton returns to town and sinks even lower, drinking with his last coins, and….
Well, I thought that part of the point of the book was to build a “protagonist” or merely main character whose fatal flaws led from promise to an ultimate wasted demise (a la Vienna Days and the kid from Running Scared, almost), but….
The self-destructive and “Unlucky” things that happen to the protagonist put him in a position to ultimately help (save) the people of town from an impending assault, and he redeems himself a bit, but the story finishes tragically (unluckily, and because the character grew and showed mercy).
The twist certainly makes the book a little more interesting, but the characterization is a little flat. I still look for the influences from popular culture which informed or inspired the writer–but whatever thoughts I had when reading the book are lost to me as I type this. So I continue to rate Ben Wolf above most self-published authors and some of the house pulp writers, but lacking a bit in the umami that makes someone like Don Pendleton pop.
So I have one more book of his to read before October (Winterspell) when I return to Davenport (perhaps) and buy one or more of his other books (probably, if perhaps comes true). So far, it’s the next in the Santa books that I’ll pick up and maybe what he’s written since unless Winterspell is really good.
