Sweazy knocks out latest
****
Fifth in Josiah Wolfe
series
is mystery-western
hybrid
BY RITA KOHN
It's
May 1875, and Josiah Wolfe's life is in
flux. He's on furlough from riding with
the
Texas Rangers, awaiting reassignment, and
hopeful in his courtship of a certain Pearl
Fikes. Austin, Texas, still doesn't feel much
like home to Wolfe, and his relationship with
his 4-year-old son has remained challenging since
the death of his wife, soon after the child’s birth.
But
an accusation of murder against a fellow
Texas
Ranger propels Wolfe into action
- and
a two-day quest to find the real killer
and
save his friend from hanging. A hybrid
of
mystery
and western, The Coyote Tracker, the
fifth novel in Noblesville-based
author Larry
Sweazy's
Josiah Wolfe series, takes us into the
underbelly
of Texas's burgeoning capital city.
Sweazy
interjects secret military codes into
the
story, giving the reader
a crack at solving
a
puzzle that's eluding the elected sheriff.
The
book is another page-turner in the
series,
featuring a cast of unsavory characters
and
unexpected allies that have appeared
in
previous covers. Still, one wouldn't turn
the
pages too quickly or risk missing lovely
descriptions,
such as that of a springtime sky
in the hill country: "Gray clouds
struggled to
hold
their shape as the west wind pushed at
them,
broke them apart, ate at them like termites
on a
fresh piece of wood."
Sweazy
won the Will Rogers Medallion
award
for Western Fiction in 2012 for The
Cougar's
Prey and for The Scorpion Trail in
2011.
The Rattlesnake Season was a
2010 Best
Book
of Indiana finalist and in 2011, The
Scorpion
Trail became the first Western to
Win
the Best Book of Indiana competition. In
2005,
he won the Western Writers of America
(WWA )Spur
Award for Best Short Story .
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