Quickshots- Peter Brandvold’s The Devil’s Winchester

There’s an irony that I write a quickshots on The Devil’s Winchester, since it has taken me over a year to read it.  I normally gobble up new books from Peter Brandvold’s Lou Prophet: Bounty Hunter series fast, as it is a quick, funny, and action packed set of novels. This one was barely interesting, and it was only memories of other, better books by Brandvold that kept me reading.   The Devil’s Winchester had none of the humor or character development we are used to seeing in the series.  Along about page 170 you see why, when Brandvold and editors slip up and call Lou Prophet by the name Longarm instead.  The Devil’s Winchester is at least partially lifted out of work intended for the Longarm series, and it shows that Brandvold is writing in a genericized housename style rather than in his own voice.  If my math is right this was the eighth book in the series, but the first disappointment.  Based on the past work I’ll definitely pick up the next book in the series, but I hope it really will be a Lou Prophet book, and not Longarm with a different name.