Friday, February 24, 2012

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.

3 comments:

  1. Hey, if you don't like THE DEVIL'S LAUGHTER, I'll eat the manuscript.

    This one was not a Longarm, by the way. I just screwed the names up, pardon the pun.

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  2. Shucks, now you make me feel bad. Rest assured that Dust of the Damned remains on my reading list, and I look forward to any new Lou Prophet books in the offing.

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  3. Peter, I'm halfway through and haven't laughed once. Can you start making them funny again?

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