This paperback Western starts out promisingly, in medias res, with a bleeding outlaw walking into a general store to buy ammunition. The author's strength is his action scenes, and he wisely starts with a long one. The author's weakness is his inability to build any narrative momentum. There's no urgency between the action set pieces, no sense of what the protagonist's goal is or what's driving his actions. As a result, the book feels very episodic, like a collection of stories instead of a novel. The plot developments described on the back cover don't start until half way through the book, and they sound more cohesive in summary than they do on the page.
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