Death Ground

So I was poking around and reading some reviews when Ed Gorman's name popped up. He was getting uniformly good reviews of both his westerns and mysteries, so I downloaded a couple to my Kindle.

I read a lot of westerns decades ago, going through a phase. Max Brand, Louis' L'Amour, others whose names I can't remember; they all defined the genre. The story lines were basically the same, the scenery similar, and the good guys (oh they might have some minor flaw to provide a semblance of introspection) always shoot straighter and faster. Gorman breaks out of this mold.

Leo Guild is trying to make a living as a bounty hunter. He's just turned 54, the prostitute he's hired as a birthday gift to himself doesn't want to do it, and the guy he's show more subcontracted to do some bodyguard work, so he could take the day off, has just been killed. He is haunted by his accidental killing of a young girl.

Father Healey is not a priest. An ex-conman wanted by authorities in Chicago for murder, he wormed his way into the good graces of Kriker's "settlement," a collection of sod houses that has grown oveer the years into a small community of outcasts. Gradually he has come to be accepted by them as a priest as he acts the part.

Kriker is an old mountain man, amoral, but haunted by a young girl, the only survbivor of one of his raids on a wagon train where he and his men had killed everyone except this little girl, including her parents. She has been mute ever since. Now she is dying of cholera, and Kriker is desperately trying to save her life using the traditional methods of "granny" an old indian woman. He won't permit any doctors as one failed to save his wife and child. But feeding the hearts of rattlesnake and little birds in boiled milk isn't helping either.

Two deputies, Thomas and James Bruckner, are conspiring to retrieve money Kriker had stolen from a bank. Guild realizes the two were the killers of the two bodyguards whom he feels responsible for. James is defined by his scarred face, badly burned as a child from when his brother, Thomas, poured kerosene all over him and then tossed in a lit match. James has since followed his brother around, constantly cowed in his presence, and Thomas is just plain evil.

The descriptions of Guild and James trekking through a blizzard to get the money in order to ransom Kriker's girl is so realistically portrayed I wished I had read it in July under a baking sun. There are some marvelous evocative descriptions.

I saw glimmers of the hope coupled with despair present in [b:Cages|6441927|Cages|Ed Gorman|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51s3Gj8kqQL._SL75_.jpg|2769774], one of Gorman's truly depressing novellas. This is really a very good book that transcends the shallow boundaries of the genre. show less