BOOK REVIEW--Drifter #1: Savage by Jake Henry

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Truth be told, I’m actually not a big fan of westerns, save for those written back in the ‘70s and ‘80s by the so-called Piccadilly Cowboys, a pint-drinking pack of British authors who took the American western formula and turned it on its head by casting antiheroes as the protagonists instead of white-hat good guys and reveling in the kind of graphic violence usually reserved for splatter-punk horror. Alas, those kind of ultra-violent westerns have seemingly gone out of style, much like dueling with pistols and disco, so I rarely pay attention to new western series when they debut, generally finding them too stale and sterilized for my liking.

But when Piccadilly Publishing announced they were releasing a brand new hard-hitting action-western series, my literary taste buds started salivating like a starving wolf eyeballing a crippled lamb. The fact that it was being put out by Piccadilly Publishing (named after those aforementioned Piccadilly Cowboys), the cool cover art, the fact that they were advertising it as a violent series … all these factors combined to jack my hopes higher than the tallest cactus in Texas that at long last a new western would capture the flavor of those old Piccadilly Cowboy books.

I hoped Drifter would be in the same vein as Edge, Breed, Steele, Claw, Jubal Cade, etc. and I must confess to a smidgen of disappointment when I started reading and realized that Drifter lacks the explicit violence of those old series. It's not tame by any stretch of the imagination—folks are killed and blood is spilled, and the killin’ and spillin’ happen fairly frequently—but it does not go for the gore with gusto. So, for better or worse (depending on your personal proclivities), it’s not a Piccadilly Cowboy styled western. That said, you most definitely will not mistake Drifter for a Louis L'Amour or Zane Grey western either. It’s much more violent than that, thank the god of six-guns, even if that violence isn’t spelled out in gruesome detail.

Paperback cover

The best thing about Drifter is that the story moves with the speed of a rattlesnake strike, the plot stripped down to the bare-bone essentials like a vulture-picked carcass. No lofty themes. Nary a whiff of pretentiousness. No interest in naval gazing. A man tangles with a pack of mangy cutthroats. Pack of mangy cutthroats rape and slaughter man's wife. Man vows revenge, hunts down the pack of mangy cutthroats, and blows them all to Hell. End of story. (Hopefully I didn’t need to post a spoiler alert…)

As you can tell, it’s a classic tale that’s been told a thousand times before, but that doesn’t dull its entertainment value. Much like fine whiskey and voluptuous women, there is just something comforting about reading a traditional story-line told with surefooted skill and that’s what author Brent Towns (writing as Jake Henry) brings to the table. His style is deceptively simple, eschewing fancy words and purple prose in favor of lean, mean writing. He never uses twelve words when ten will do just fine, trimming all the fat and letting nothing stand in the way of all the gun-blazing action.

Bottom line, Drifter #1: "Savage" is packed with hot bullets and cold vengeance, so action-western fans should gobble it up. If you glance at your bookshelf and see titles like Slocum, Longarm, and Gunsmith sitting there in all their dog-eared, paper-backed glory, then you should definitely give Drifter a shot.