Clyde Barr is back. After dealing with the kidnapping of his
sister in Nothing Short Of Dying, Clyde Barr headed off to the Utah desert on
his mare and mule, Bob. Struggling to regain his identity, he finds an old man
(Bud), idling in a pickup in a ditch. Being the curious sort, he checks in on
the man, guesses he is having a heart attack, ties up his steeds, and drives
the man to the closest hospital. In thanks, Bud invites Clyde to dinner at his
home in the Ute reservation town of Wakara where Bud lives with his physician
daughter Lawana and 15yo grandson Taylor.
Bud mostly runs a small horse ranch, but being laid up, he
talks Clyde into sticking around til he gets back on his feet. Lawana is
skeptical of this White while Taylor easily takes to Clyde. While working the
fences and shoveling manure with Taylor, Clyde learns how Lawana came to become
a physician and that his father had died in Afghanistan. Barr comes to realize
that he is pretty good at ranching.
A ranch comes with needing supplies. Clyde and Taylor head
into town. In the tack store for horseshoe supplies, Clyde hears Native music
and goes to peek. Only the drumming music gets drowned out by the roar of maybe
a half dozen Harleys. Seemed out of place in a reservation town.
Barr’s next trip to town crosses paths with a couple young
Ute toughs, but their Warrior Spirit fades when Jury, the head dog of the
Reapers ‘club’ shows them what tough means. Clyde being the nosey sort steps in
and Jury takes issue.
Turns out about 40 bikers have set up camp outside of Wakara
and have been raising hell in town for the past week or two. Anyone who looks
at them cross-eyed gets a lesson in biker respect.
The one oddball of the bunch is a small-ish dude who looks
more like an accountant. Goes by Orval. What he says, the bikers do. Tries to
do nice with the Natives by being fake nice. The Utes see through that façade,
but a few generations on the reservation has sapped the renowned Ute Warrior
Spirit.
Did I mention that Barr’s the nosey type? He also sees
things as right and wrong. And what the bikers are doing to the peaceful folks
on this Northern Ute reservation is just wrong. When the Natives decide to find
out why the Reapers are in Wakara, their stealth helps them learn that the
Reapers have stolen something and are waiting for the pickup and to get paid.
Out on the rez, TVs, internet, and cell phones aren’t high
on anyone’s list of things to do. But when driving to Vernal for hard to get
supplies, the radio news is going on and on about Homeland Security essentially
shutting down the western third of the country. Air, rail, and other commercial
travel west of the Continental Divide has been shut down. The west is, for lack
of a better term, under martial law.
Orval is joined by the Middle Eastern looking Omani. This is
the real boss. He is in Wakana to collect his merchandise and make good use of
it. The Natives and Clyde work out a nighttime raid on the Reaper camp to drive
them out. In doing so, Clyde realizes that the semi at the camp contains
Omani’s merchandise. In the ensuing raid, Barr manages to highjack the semi and
hide it in plain sight out in an abandoned oil field deep in the desert.
Omani, Orval, Jury, and the rest of the Reaper’s ain’t happy
and begin to exact their revenge on the town. And that ain’t right, either.
Barr recalls the skills that kept him alive in Africa, South America, and
Mexico to lead the Natives in a bloody counterattack.
Storey packs a lot into a compact 265 pages. Barr is the
modern-day equivalent of the dusty loner cowboy drifter. Looking for something,
but not sure just what. He may have found something with Lawana and Taylor. Yet
the horrors of his past and the destruction he reaps on the Reapers are issues
that might be too much for anyone, Barr included.
Be prepared for an edge of your seat desert conflict that
pits the guerilla tactics of the Natives vs. the ball busting skills of the
bikers. The reckless ride through the town and the surrounding desert will keep
your eyes glued to the page. This may only be Storey’s 2nd book, but
it sure reads like it was penned by a seasoned pro. You might compare Barr to
Lee Child’s Jack Reacher. Both see the world as right and wrong. The one
difference between the two is that Reacher is supremely confident in his
abilities. Barr on the other hand questions his actions and motives. Questions
his interactions with the Natives. Is scared to death about why he attracts
danger so readily and puts people he comes to care about in lethal danger.
I
wouldn’t call Reacher out as a scarred hero. But Barr? His whole life is a scar.
East Coast Don
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