Review: The population boom in Wolf Creek comes to a sudden halt
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 23, 2013
On its best days, Wolf Creek, Kansas, isn’t a peaceful sort of place, but when a local drug lord and brothel owner decides the town ain’t big enough for him and any competitors, things go completely to hell without even the benefit of a handbasket. Disembodied heads in bloody burlap sacks start showing up on doorsteps … and that’s the least of the town’s worries.Wolf Creek Book 8: Night of the Assassins may be the most blood-drenched volume in the Wolf Creek series yet. Except for a brief foray into Old West forensics courtesy of town doc Logan Munro (written by Clay More), violent deaths stack up like tumbleweeds against a fence. Munro’s chapter, which provides an up-close look at an 1871 autopsy, offers the only opportunity readers will have to catch their breath. When a detailed, clinical examination of decapitation victims is the “light” reading in a novel ... well, draw your own conclusions.Hostler and former Texas Ranger Ben Tolliver (James J. Griffin) is the first to find one of Chinese “businessman” Tsu Chiao’s gory messages. Tolliver responds by storming Tsu’s opium den and provoking a brawl with the kingpin’s bodyguards, some of whom don’t survive. Then hired gun Wesley Quaid (Matthew Pizzolato) and a small group of ranch hands tangle with Tsu’s imported assassins. More violence, blood, and death ensue.Racial tension grows bowstring-tight as the mysterious, largely invisible assassins strike at will and then disappear. Even Wolf Creek residents who are reasonably well behaved (by local standards) begin forming mobs with the intention of ridding the prairie of all Celestials. A full-scale riot seems inevitable about the time mild-mannered schoolteacher Cora Sloan (Bill Crider) forms a one-woman vigilance committee and commences to shooting folks in order to protect a law-abiding Chinese family. Poor Marshal Sam Gardner (Troy Smith) and his deputies are at their wits’ end trying to keep a lid on the town by backing down one side and then the other — repeatedly. Thank goodness Samuel Jones’s (Chuck Tyrell) San Francisco connections prove to be a literal lifesaver, albeit a violent, bloody one.Wolf Creek Book 8: Night of the Assassins is Old West action on steroids. Still, the book manages to add education and a walloping dose of surprise to the non-stop entertainment. Fans of the series definitely won’t be disappointed, but they may find themselves asking “how will Ford Fargo top this?”