Badlands

Fackler's acclaimed Seth Strummar series continues with Badlands, in which the notorious desperado, after seventeen years of running on the wrong side of the law, has retired at last. Determined to provide a better life for his family, he has settled down in the Arizona Territory, where the townspeople are barely willing to tolerate the famous killer.
But the fragile peace of his new life is shattered when Lila Keats comes to town. Gorgeous, cunning, and diabolical, she's determined to settle an old score with Strummar. Seth's maneuvers against her threaten his long-standing friendship with his partner and jeopardize the innocence of his son, Lobo.

The third volume in Fackler's well-received Seth Strummar series is an uneven mixture of good guys, bad guys, bad kids, bad women and the gang that couldn't ride or shoot straight. It's 1883, and gunfighter and bank robber Seth has retired to a ranch in the Arizona Territory, determined to live down his bloody past. Despite his good intentions, however, he is still an outlaw saddlebum at heart, living off stolen money and letting down the friends and loved ones who need him most. When saloon tart Lila Keats rides into town out of Seth's past, it's clear that a revenge plot is afoot. Lila pulls a gang of inept hardcases into a brief blaze of action and gunfire, with Seth leading an equally inept posse in plodding pursuit. The whole story is dragged down by a raft of rotten, unsympathetic characters, Seth included. The sheriff is a crook, the women are whores with hearts of stone, the town's leading citizens are liars and thieves; even Seth's seven-year-old son turns out to be a killer. Joaquin, Seth's partner, is the only good guy, but even his light gets doused in this dismal tale. After Fackler's last, the superb Billy the Kid: The Legend of El Chivato (1995), this reads like an anemic horse opera in slow motion
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Seth Strummar was the most feared killer in the Southwest, but now he's settled uneasily into the life of an Arizona homesteader, married with children. Then Lila Keats and her husband, Bart, come to town. Bart calls Seth out--claiming he was wronged by Seth years ago--and Seth sends Bart out of the saloon face first. Set on revenge, Lila hatches a plan to rob the local bank, where Seth keeps all his outlaw loot. Seth lets the law protect his money, but it turns out to be a bad decision, forcing him to pursue the robbers in order to recoup his finances. The Strummar series strives to be more than a standard western shoot-'em-up, and it often succeeds. Strummar is attempting to redeem his past life through his new family, but every day is a struggle. He is an outlaw by nature and chafes at civilization's conventions. His struggle to suppress his nature makes this novel unusual and worthwhile genre reading. Wes Lukowsky