Storme Front: A Wyatt Storme Mystery

Wyatt Storme is his own man. An ex-NFL star with two tours of duty in Vietnam, Storme is a skeptical Thoreau-style hero who bolted to a life of solitude when he felt fenced in by life in the fast lane - he's funny that way. Some wise investments and the love of Sandra Collingsworth, a TV anchorwoman, have made the transition easier, allowing Storme to retreat to his Colorado mountaintop home, free to enjoy his semi-reclusive lifestyle or involve himself in quixotic enterprises.
In Storme Front it's the latter. Fresh from his adventures foiling drug manufacturers in Dreamsicle, Storme finds himself reluctantly drawn into a web of murder, extortion, and high-level politics when he attempts to extricate longtime friend Matt Jenkins from an unsavory connection to a cadre of contraband gun merchants. Complicating matters is a dark secret from Storme's past that threatens to jeopardize his fragile relationship with Sandy - a relationship that Storme depends on to prevent his retreat into the darker side of his personality.
Assisting Storme again is the enigmatic Chick Easton, a modern bounty hunter with a sideways worldview and a classified Vietnam dossier. Together they encounter some of the most powerful and predatory men in the Rockies (as well as some of the mountains' more interesting women), entertaining each other along the way with the biting, rapid-fire wit of two men who have seen too much without looking away - two men best described as nineties dropouts.

Lame excuses for violence and lots of smart patter can't redeem this lackluster story about illegal gun trading. Introduced in Dreamsicle, former Dallas Cowboy Wyatt Storme, now living in the Colorado mountains, is worried that a Vietnam-vet friend is involved in something over his head. Soon Storme has befriended a lowly drug dealer and his doofus sidekick (the first of many dim souls subjected to the Wyatt wit), secretly observed a gun buy and shot a few paramilitary types-all before departing with the stash. From there on, Storme is hunting for the bad guys amidst ballplaying buddies and political hotshots. Ripley's hero, who plays classical music in his macho muscle car and tries to keep up romantic repartee with his anchorwoman sweetheart, seems molded on the Spenser form. But given his penchant for putting down others and his readiness to pummel his way out of trouble, below the surface, he's as thuglike as the bad guys. Amid the the wiseacre dialogue and predictable brutality, the plot seems almost an afterthought. Author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

If you've noted a testosterone deficiency in your life lately, the second Wyatt Storme mystery will have you walkin' the walk and talkin' the talk. Storme is an iconoclastic ex-footballer living in Colorado who likes a little action now and again. He also can't resist helping a friend, like the buddy who's in deep with local dirtball Jackie Burlingame. Hoping to extricate his pal, Wyatt agrees to ride shotgun for Burlingame on an illegal gun deal, taking along his hard-drinking cohort Chick Easton. The deal goes bad, leaving Wyatt and Chick with the guns and a couple hundred in cash. A series of tough-guy confrontations follows as Wyatt and Chick try to find out the who and why of the gun deal before the bad guys get them. Adding to the cowboy ethic at work in the novel is the well-drawn Colorado backdrop. These are tough men in a tough land. Yes, the story draws heavily on some Marlboro Man clich{‚}es, but author Ripley knows what he's doing and does it well. Damn fine entertainment. Wes Lukowsky