As always Hambly does an excellent job of evoking the danger that January faces every day, although I found his situation a little less heart-poundingly tense than in most of the previous books. Lots of great detail about early Texas politics comes up without being pedantic or boring, and it's also a portrait of what daily life might have been like. I've done a little reading before about the early cowhands aka vaqueros, it's was different than what we think. The motive for the murder is nicely convoluted, plenty of theories slowly coalesce into the solution. I didn't guess the identity of the murderer - there are more than a few suspects, most of them very unpleasant people. Good pacing, amazing sense of place and time, good suspense.

Share/Like this Review?