The Sorrow Hand, Paperback/Dwight Holing

Description For Vietnam veteran turned wildlife ranger Nick Drake, the war at home proves just as deadly. A contemporary western thriller. Harney County, Oregon, 1968: Nick Drake has a chest full of medals and enough demons to fill a duffle bag. He's been trained to kill, but never retrained to rejoin society. Drake flees to the lonesome high desert in search of redemption and takes a job patrolling wildlife refuges where the only conflicts are keeping out stray cows and ticketing poachers. But then he stumbles across a girl's body ritually placed in a gully. Her murder is only the beginning, and Drake must face humanity's heart of darkness once again if he's to stop a killer from turning even more gullies into graves. What readers are saying: Fits right alongside Craig Johnson, C.J. Box, and Nevada Barr. I'm a huge fan of contemporary westerns married with a mystery. This nails it. Nick Drake is wonderfully complex. His backstory in Vietnam is beautifully (and horrifically) described. The supporting characters feel so real. The old lawman, Deputy Pudge Warbler, is as flinty and resolute as his pitiless territory. I absolutely loved the Native American character, her language and myths. Got it on Friday and finished it on Saturday. An amazing read. Smart, thrilling, and action-packed. The prose crackles like the high desert setting. The descriptions of the natural surroundings put me right there. I could touch, smell, and hear it.