* Just to note: Due to illness and a hafty workload, I’ve fallen behind my goal of 100 books in 2018. So, I’m reading through a series of Mountain Man books to catch up.*

Guns of the Mountain Man by William W. Johnstone
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I don’t know what was happening within the Johnstone Clan stables in the late ’90s, when this book was published. Perhaps they were grappling with the few series of books they were chugging out at the time or this is when William Johnstone began getting ill, ultimately leading to his death in 2003. Whatever was occurring, this book should never have seen the light of day. As with Mountain Man books just previous to this one, the book stinks.

The worse of this book is re-re-re-re-revisiting the story of Smoke stopping the “tree”ing of a town. As the Johnstone Clan has proven later in the 2000s, as the Johnstone seemingly-nearly-endless series began, there are a ton of other stories to create beyond the treeing of a town. Again, i believe something was going wrong at the time with the Johnstones and these books were pumped out to fulfill contracts.

Next worse, is the horrible & lazy act of filling about 3/7ths of the book with content of other books. As a writer myself, I know it would be easier to write in fluffy filler, than researching sections of older books and cut and paste into the newer. I believe this gets back to problems in the Johnstone stable where multiple people were assembling these books and adding earlier sections of books to fluff out a short story written by someone else, all the while fighting deadlines for their contracts. I’d hate to think the filler was intentional. Filler cheats the reader and is wrong.

Next is the story. No surprises. Nothing new. In fact, an old location is used and a shorter version of the original story with the location is presented. More cheating the reader.

Characters are very good, as, I believe, is the hallmark of the Johnstone Clan series. A huge boo-boo is made involving one main character who’s dialogue is written one way in the actually story, but written differently in section cut in from another book.

Bottom line: I don’t recommend this book. 2 out of 10 points.

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The Gentle Desperado by Max Brand

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a book assembled by the publishers of three of “Max Brand”‘s stories originally published in a western magazine. The three are loosely strung together. Though there are no separators of the three stories, it is very obvious that there are three. Each is a good story. The conclusion of all three stories have a very good twist, as is often the case with a “Brand” story.

I just wish “Brand” had done a better job writing them. The dialogue and narrative is very stilted even for the 1920s, when the three stories were originally published. Some of the stilted writing, I realize, is based on two of the characters. But did so much have to be written this way, too?

There is also an issue of what seem to be missing stories that fell in between the ones presented. They are referred to, but make the stories more confusing.

I’m just glad this was not my first “brand” novel, or I might have given up on him. I almost wonder if he had ghost writers produces the stories, in that the writing is often so irregular.

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Power Down by Ben Coes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What a thrill ride! All that I read review wise of this book is true. It moves hard and fast. It also reflects much of what we are afraid of these days involving terrorists. The foundation of that is very real. Otherwise realism does have a hard time here, especially involving the financial issues dealt with. Author Coes knows a lot of details but misses some critical fundamentals that would occur due to actions in the plot of the book. Because of that and some logical issues, I’ll trim the rating a bit. Most reading wouldn’t notice the errors anyway. Despite that this is a not to be missed thriller for anyone who is a fan of those!

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The Vanisher by Kenneth Robeson
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This is my first Doc Savage novel. I read some of the comic books back in the 1970s. Those didn’t strike me even though I’m a fan of the main artist that drew it. This one also didn’t grab me. It is poorly plotted, written and, in general, conceived. It’s full of plot holes and bad literary devices. There is all kinds of nonsense where one minute Doc is thinking way ahead of everyone and then suddenly seems not to be able to think at all. The writer worked way to hard to keep the bad guy a mystery, though to me it was obvious what was going on. I hoped loose ends and needless action scenes added up to even a bad plot twist. Didn’t happen in that way. All of this is assembled to be one of the worst books I’ve read in many years.

However, two friends tell me not to give it up and track down the early adventures of the Doc. This I get. Sounds like a situation similar to the Mike Shayne series. It’s a powerful set of mysteries up until the original writer dropped it into the hands of a sea of freelancers brought in by Dell publishers. So I will wander back to the Doc Savage series as soon as I find one of the early parts of the series.

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Two more Florida based mysteries read. One of Mignon Eberhart’s Tampa Bay novels and a later Miami-based Mike Shayne mystery. Eberhart writes of a fictious Florida County on the east coast with a pretty good understanding of the area. The Shayne novel is after the actual series by Dave Dresser. This one stays pretty true to the original series, just with curse words. I veered into one of Vince Flynn’s latest, ‘Protect and Defend’. Another good thriller.