Napierski (Moonin Canoe & White Owl: The Great Gold Heist of 1870, 2016), picking up where the first novel in his series left off, sends his two Lakota heroes, brothers Moonin Canoe and White Owl, off on another Old West adventure full of bad guys, high jinks, and low deeds.

The authorities have yet to recover all the missing gold from the 1870 train robbery in the last installment, but now they have bigger fish to fry. The ruthless and clever Silas Marless is planning to enrich the coffers of his California criminal enterprise, the Rice Factory, by acquiring claims to a few major gold mines on the southern side of the Black Hills. Marless’ late partner, Col. Fletcher Montgomery, split his gold claims between Marless and the Montgomery Ranch caretaker, Teddy Metz. U.S. Marshal Ed “Granny” Mondey, working together with Pinkerton inspector Tyrone “Butch” Zon, is out to stop Marless before the outlaw can appropriate Teddy’s share, start a new gold rush, and, ultimately, push the Lakotas off their land. He recruits Moonin and Owl to pick up Teddy at the Denver train station; unfortunately, it turns out that Teddy is no longer on the train. He may be 80 years old and going senile, but he’s a wily survivor, and it takes almost half the book for Moonin and Owl to track him down. Along the way, the novel is populated by a voluminous secondary cast of miscreants, including corrupt politicians, deadly gun slingers, and a slew of repulsive “enforcers” and their coteries. Happily, Napierski provides a list of characters up front, but it won’t do much to help readers trying to keep track of the numerous subplots and assorted ulterior motives. Still, this is a rollicking, shoot-’em-up farce, filled with brutish players who ultimately get their just deserts. Despite his overuse of adolescent bathroom humor, Napierski does skillfully provide succinct, vivid character descriptions: “With his big bushy beard dripping cigar drool, hairy paws, and country charm, Beales resembled a bear in buttons.”

Too cluttered, but with sympathetic heroes and its free-for-all shenanigans, it will likely amuse genre fans.

Welcome to Blazing Saddles, with a much larger cast.

Napierski bases his debut novel on a fictional gold heist in the American West in 1870. The characters come thick and fast, beginning with the wily and disgruntled Col. Fletcher Montgomery, who sets it all in motion, then dies. Then there is the murderous lone wolf Apache Kila Kazara, various lawmen, the Seventh Cavalry, a Pinkerton contingent led by Tyrone “Butch” Zon, a legendary hired gun named Jay Johnstone, another named Eldon James—and that’s the short list. It is rather late in the romp when readers meet the two heroes, the siblings Moonin Canoe and White Owl, half-breed grandsons of Stormbringer, legendary chief in the Black Hills of the Dakotas. This motley bunch tries to figure out how the gold shipment from Denver City to Kansas City got hijacked (an inside job?) and what happened to the loot. And how to steal the more than $250,000 in gold. The action ranges from the Black Hills down to Mexico, and the players range from the inept to the barely competent (with the creditable exception of the two brothers, as befits heroes).The tortuous plot builds to an epic showdown and gun battle in El Paso, Texas—the outcome betrays the cartoonish nature of this yarn—which leads to a chase into the Mexican desert. Some readers may never make it through the labyrinthine story to figure out what happened to most of the gold and who got it. The book is long and involved, and these virtues are also its vices, depending on readers’ sensibilities. Readers who expect a fairly straightforward account of the heist and its aftermath will likely find the book tough going. But giving that up, they can open the novel almost anywhere and enjoy the Keystone Kops high jinks and the outrageous characters. Napierski, who is planning a sequel, is clearly enjoying himself immensely, which encourages readers to do the same.

While it offers a confusing plot, this Western novel about a gold heist delivers plenty of exhilarating characters and madcap escapades.