Peter Brandvold

I really enjoyed reading The Bells of El Diablo. It is a solid, unassuming action-adventure western that only wants to spin the reader a good yarn. And when the writer has such a modest and endearing goal, no doubt motivated by his own love of westerns, it's hard not to be charmed.

Author Frank Leslie's ability to get the reader onside is essential because, for all its charm, it does have one or two flaws. For one, I wish the quest to find the Bells was a bit more prominent in the plot, and I show more wish it had been more of a challenge in terms of actually finding them. I also got a bit exasperated about how, in the many gunfights, the bad guys would shoot first and miss, and then one of our protagonists would shoot and hit. I lost count of how many times it happened, and it often happened even when the bad guys had the drop on them. I didn't mind all the gunfights (I liked how some of the guns - namely James' Henry repeater and Crosseye's Lefaucheux revolver - almost had personalities of their own) but it did take me out of the story when all the villains were worse shots than the stormtroopers in Star Wars. To be fair, though, most action writers struggle to get around this problem of having the protagonist get into exciting, tight situations like gunfights and still have them come out the other side. Having the bad guys not being able to hit the side of a barn is the easiest way to get out of having your protagonist dead within thirty pages.

But these gripes are only minor and don't even factor in if you are won over by the novel's charm. Leslie is a good story-teller, creating in this novel a clear, straightforward plot, likeable characters and camaraderie between them, and an interesting MacGuffin (though more could have been done to flesh out the story behind the titular Bells). There is also the occasional twist (I did see the one towards the end coming, but this could just be because of my mistrustful nature) and the odd hints of darkness lying underneath the prose but, all in all, it's just a good old adventure. Leslie knows his stuff and, whilst he relies largely on standard western tropes, it does feel authentic and you can lose yourself in the story for a day or two. The ending even had the classic 'ride off into the sunset' trope, reinforcing the fact that the author just wanted to give you a good, honest western with a bit of gunplay. He does it well, and I will certainly look to Frank Leslie again if I want to just lose myself in a tale of the Old West. show less

The Guns of Sapinero opens with a scene right out of the Spaghetti West. Two mules are pulling a wagon with a grisly cargo along a trail in the Lunatic mountains. Young ranch-hand Colter Farrow discovers his adoptive father has been crucified, nailed to the bed of the wagon. Colter heads out to the town of Sapinero to discover who killed his father and why.

Peter Brandvold wrote this one under his pen name, Frank Leslie. I'm not clear on why he uses a pen name, as it is a pretty open secret show more and the style is no different. This book has all of Brandvold's trademark touches. Gritty, violent and well written action, quirky and unusual secondary characters and an innocent hero who is corrupted by a thirst for vengeance and, unfortunately, repetitive use of certain phrases.

Whenever Colter would think of his adopted family back in the Lunatics, the description was exactly the same. His young sister was always referred to as 'little May'. I think Peter Brandvold just needs a better editor.

Really, that's my only real quibble with the book. The Guns of Sapinero is the best Brandvold book I've read so far. The action is well handled and visceral, the settings are pretty interesting and Colt's final, blazing revenge is masterfully done.

I believe it is the first in a series and (assuming it is) I will be picking up the rest of Colter Farrow's adventures.

I also want to say that the cover for this book is fantastic. Lately, pulp westerns have had some awful covers. Photoshopped pictures of cowboys that are usually pretty hokey. The Guns of Sapinero's bright red cover reminds me of the style of the Italian westerns. I hope this cover artist sticks with the series. show less

Cuno Massey's idyllic life is shattered when his family is murdered by men from his step-mother's past. Barely able to ride a horse and not a talented shooter, he nonetheless vows vengeance. I'm a sucker for a good tale of revenge in the west.

This was a nice change of pace from a lot of western stories I've read. Vengeance tales are a dime a dozen in the western genre, but usually the wronged hero is a man trying to escape a violent past. .45-Caliber Revenge stands that archetype on its show more head.

At the beginning of the book, our hero Cuno has no business being on his own. He has to learn all the skills of a typical western lead over the course of the book. In fact, this tale could function as the back story to uncountable 'Man With No Name'-type heroes.

I'm not sure what I thought of the writing. On the one hand, I was unimpressed with Peter Brandvold's prose. The writing is good, if unadorned. The only time it drew attention to itself was when he would stumble. The author reused phrases like 'ground eating gallop' and 'naked as a jaybird' too many times in a 250 page book.

So I wasn't crazy about the narrative. And yet... he still pulled me in. Kept me wanting to read a little bit more. The pace is terrific and each chapter tends to leave the reader wanting more by ending on some sort of cliff hanger. Cuno's chase is well done. It takes him long enough to find the bad guys that he has managed to become a capable shootist, yet the story never bogs down and loses sight of Cuno's ultimate goal.

The good guy is really good (yet flawed enough to be believable) the bad guys are really bad and characters have those great names you can only get away with in a western. Aside from Cuno, you will also meet folks like Sammy Spoon, July Summer, Amos Church and Miss Glory. Cuno's gradual change from innocent youth to death dealer is handled really well. We watch him change gradually as life on the trail reshapes who he is.

Also, the book was pretty un-PC. Usually that is a good thing. But the treatment of the Indians, not by the characters but by the author, I didn't like. They were almost always portrayed as leering devil-faced savages. I can handle the characters having a bad opinion of the Natives. That's historical accuracy. To have the author repeatedly refer to them as savages as a descriptor I did have an issue with.

At the same time I enjoyed the story enough that I kept wanting to find an odd moment to pick up the book and read just a few more pages. I wasn't aware how much fun I was having with .45-Caliber Revenge until I finished it. I will pick up more of Peter Brandvold's westerns. show less

Peter Brandvold’s Rogue Lawman opens with an atmospheric scene of a trio of lawmen trailing villains across sage covered badlands. They track the bad men to a ramshackle saloon and a quick and dirty shootout ensues.

Before too long, one of those lawmen, Marshal Gideon Hawk, finds his family wiped out by a desperado seeking revenge. Gideon apprehends the scoundrel and brings him to trial, only to have justice denied. This leads him down the dark path to revenge.

Rogue Lawman is reminiscent of show more the best of the spaghetti westerns. It's a gritty and violent western chock-full of unusual characters: a vicious dwarf and guys with names like Three Fingers Ned Meade, Crazy Chuck and Beaver Face Pyle. The writing is effective and descriptive, which is an improvement on the writing of the last Brandvold book I read, .45-Caliber Revenge. The author has a real knack for describing shoot-outs clearly and loads them with suspense.

It clocks in at a slim two hundred pages, but I have to say that it still felt like there was a bit of padding to the book. There was a fifty page stretch detailing Meade’s activity after attacking the Marshal’s family: an exciting bank robbery that bleeds into a shoot out between Ned’s gang and Hawk’s posse in the middle of a town.

While this set piece is one of the highlights of the book, it is also immediately forgotten and not mentioned again. When Meade goes to trial it is for the murder of Hawk’s son only. He is released for lack of evidence and freed. No one seems to remember his part in a bank robbery, or the very public gun battle, which left several dead on both sides of the law, just three pages before. It seems it would have been better for the story if Hawk wounded and captured Meade immediately after his son's death. Then Meade's acquittal and release would have been plausible. The bank robbery felt like it was clumsily wedged in after the fact to increase the page count.

Also, to me the big baddie just didn’t seem bad enough. He was literally jumping at shadows throughout the book. It was hard to believe that a man that skittish could even manage to be that bad, much less lead a group of outlaws. It could be that he wasn’t skittish over all, that he was just terrified of Hawk. But if that is the case, Brandvold never explained why Meade would suddenly be so afraid of the lawman. So far as the reader knows, Meade had never met Hawk prior to when he murders Hawk's son and never mentions that Hawk has any sort of legendary reputation.

In the end, I liked the bleak tone of the book and thought the action was well done (especially that terrific opening scene). However, the large plot hole made me feel like the book was rushed. I may pick up the sequel, to see if Brandvold can keep the stuff I like and improve what I didn't like, but I'd have a tough time recommending this first one to anyone except an avid reader of westerns. show less