West Texas by Al Sarrantonio

 

“The killer’s name is Curtis Marks?”

“Not much of a name for a man who's murdered so many, is it? He must be”-- Thomas studied the short entry—“twenty years old now. This explains almost everything.” He looked up at Lincoln, eyes bright. “The mystery is solved, Trooper Reeves. I not only know where the killer is, but who he is, why he kills and why we'll find him where he is now.”

Um...if that passage feels a bit like the third act wrap-up of a third-rate English murder mystery, well, that’s because that is just one of the shoehorned elements in this mish-mash of a novel.

We take Buffalo Soldiers in West Texas, mix in a serial killer with baroque motivation and apparent superpowers, add a cavalryman who has trained himself to be a detective reading Sherlock Holmes stories, add some various kitchen sinks here and there and you get, well, writing like the opening extract.

The author clearly knows what he has in mind, our Sherlock Holmes wannabe knows what’s what, the problem is, we the reader are never offered the same insight to, well, much of anything.

That is not just referring to the motivation and ability to track down the serial killer [which is well nigh nonsensical] it is also down to standard elements.

I was well into the novel before we are privileged to the information that our protagonist is black and the victim of prejudice. The information just seems to come out of nowhere.

Each additional character along the way, we are never quite certain who they are, or why we are even meeting them.

There are entire chapters that pop up towards the end involving Mescalero Apache—they feel dropped in from a completely separate nonsensical novel.

My first from Mr. Sarrantonio, and perhaps there are excellent choices out there—we can all have a bad day.

But I gotta say, this one is, well…