Review: The aftermath of the Civil War and the way it changed the Wild West
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 4, 2013
Spaghetti westerns in both cinematic and literary formats have long been a favorite with readers: they take adventure on a man to man level to the maximum without the need for intervention by aliens or comic book hero types.Van Holt has penned twenty-six gunfighting novels and some critics have termed him the successor to Zane Grey. His bio states, ` Holt wrote his first western when he was in high school and sent it to a literary agent but it was rejected for being too long. On a tour of duty as an MP stationed in South Korea Holt nabbed a North Korean spy and had to talk the dimwitted desk sergeant out of letting the guy go. Holt says there hasn't been too much excitement since he got out of the army, unless you count the time he was attacked by two mean young punks and shot one of them in the big toe. Holt believes what we need is punk control, not gun control. After traveling all over the West and Southwest in an aging Pontiac, Van Holt got tired of traveling the day he rolled into Tucson and he has been there ever since, or maybe the next great mystery writer. He likes to write mysteries when he's not too busy writing westerns or eating Twinkies.'Holt knows his way around not only the country of the wild west but also the conditions of living in that environment in the old days. His characters are not only realistic: they are credible in language, behavior and gunfire! SIX-GUN SERENADE concerns  Jed Baker and Bill Hicken who rode with Quantrill in the early days of the Civil War. But after the massacre at Lawrence, Kansas, Bill Hicken switched sides and became a Union spy. During that time he met a beautiful young southern girl who later changed her name. By the early 1870s, Bill Hicken was a legendary gunfighter. His old comrade Jed Baker didn't expect to run into him in the Apache-haunted desert wasteland of the Southwest, near the scene of too many murders and attempted murders (as is Van Holt's usual clever way of sustaining our tension). If Hicken wasn't the killer, who was? It gets complicated, but in Van Holt's wise crafting the story comes to a satisfying end.If it is action Western style that fascinates you, this book is a fine addition to the volumes about the Wild Wild West. Grady Harp, October 13