Review: `A Hellbound Western'
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 22, 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 four 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! WILD COUNTRY introduces Jeff Pickett (age 28) who is poor but has is pride - `too much pride perhaps. More than he could afford. It had caused him a lot of trouble  - an trouble was the one thing he did not want, for it soured everything.' He encounters Chet Miller, a young 27 year old gambler who is critically wounded from a gambling game with bad guy Ned Keegan and since Pickett has shown honest kindness to Miller, the dying Miller leaves Pickett with his horse and $10,000 in the saddlebags and his fine clothes: Miller had no kin but makes Pickett promise to keep Keegan from getting the $10,000. And we're off and running on a chase between the advancing evil Keegan with an eye to kill and the all around good guy Pickett.If it is action Western style that fascinates you, this book is a fine addition to the volumes of wild wild westerns. Grady Harp, August 13