JOHN LEE JOHNSON
Into the Pits of Hell
by Conn Hamlett
This sixth installment of a series finds the eponymous Texas hero once again facing off against the minions of a Philadelphia-based former Union officer hellbent on having him killed.
It is 1865, the Union has occupied Texas, and James Stevens, a young carpetbagger from up North, is a powerful state legislator in Austin. He is the loathsome Frank McGrew’s man in Texas. As per instructions received from Philadelphia, Stevens is implementing a complicated plan that will rid McGrew of rancher John Lee Johnson—and add to the legislator’s fortune. Stevens orders his henchman T-Dilly Whitaker to organize the kidnapping of John’s cousin Duchess Thompson. This will force John into a contract to fight El Toro de Sanchez in a place called “the pit” on the edge of Mexico’s Chihuahua Desert. Meanwhile, in Baileysboro, Texas, bank president Seth Johnson (another of John’s cousins) is looking for a wife. He has recently rescued four little girls and wants to adopt them, but Texas law won’t permit that until he marries. Then there is the mystery surrounding G.W. Lambert, an older fellow who signs on as a ranch hand working with young Sand Burr Rogers, John’s most trusted ramrod. The various storylines ultimately intersect but not before a plethora of gunfights leaves the landscape littered with bodies. There is little time for character development in this action-driven, rip-roaring Wild West novel with so many players even the author occasionally has trouble keeping them all straight—in two instances, he refers to Sand Burr as Seth. Although the breakneck pace never slackens, Hamlett (John Lee Johnson Will Hurt You Bad—Real Bad, 2017, etc.) manages to include moments of charming tenderness. In an approximation of a morality play, bad guys are destroyed by their own desires for revenge and good guys are rewarded for their unexpected acts of kindness. John is rather comically huge—tall, with a “thick neck corded with ropelike tendons and powerful shoulders that were a yard wide”—but he is a most enjoyable lead.
Page-turning excitement for fans of old-fashioned Westerns, with a satisfying final reveal.