Robert Hale Limited, London,  July 31, 2009
ISBN 13: 978-0709087656
Hardcover, 160 pages
£12.99    (Available from Book Depository, $21.30)

Reviewed by Larry W. Chavis

Jake Larribee doesn’t need much out of life: enough money to keep him in whiskey and easy women and a bank to rob when that runs out. When a posse nearly catches him in flagrante delicto in the Silver Sands “bawdy house” Jake makes a window-crashing, hard riding escape for safer parts of New Mexico Territory. Along the way he rescues a young gun-hand, Blaze Morgan, from a certain hanging and gets involved with a suttler and his beautiful young daughter, naturally landing him in a war with the biggest rancher around.

So far THE DEATH SHADOW RIDERS is typical Hollywood-western-mythos, and it does little to rise above that level throughout. Having killed the “straw boss” of the Slash Y spread when he attempted to force himself on the girl, Larribee and Morgan light out for Arizona, but on hearing how Simpson, owner of the Slash Y, has taken revenge for his dead hand, they ride back into New Mexico where they take on the ranch full of hard men. Though Larribee is a bank robber and Morgan a hired gun and killer, one can almost see the white and black hats as they go up against the Slash Y villains.

Despite its liberal use of Western clichè THE DEATH SHADOW RIDERS still provides a few hours’ pleasant diversion if one accepts its Saturday-afternoon-matinee presentation and the author’s use of some rather peculiar verb-forms: one character “gimlet-eyed” another on a couple of occasions, and a few other curious combinations are scattered throughout. Still, if one is looking for a damsel-in-distress tale set in old New Mexico, THE DEATH SHADOW RIDERS will provide an afternoon’s escape.

Copyright ©2009 Larry W. Chavis