Rough Riders -- Charlie Stella

I reviewed Charlie Stella's novel Eddie's World here. If you click the link, you'll see that I liked it a lot. Rough Riders is sort of a sequel. But as you can see from the cover, its setting is a bit different. If you like to read about cold weather, this is the book for you.

There's a lot going on, too, but I'll try for a short recap. Washington Stewart wants Eddie dead because of the events in the earlier book. Two guys are sent to do the job. Stewart himself is hired by an Air Force colonel to kill the colonel's two-timing wife in exchange for a couple of bags of uncut heroin and a trip out of the country. Did I mention that Stewart's in the Witness Protection program? Well, he is, and that explains why much of the book takes place in North Dakota.

As so often is the case with the best-laid plans, things don't go at all as they're supposed to, either in New York or in North Dakota. Eddie's wife hires Alex Pavlik, a cop in the earlier book, now a private-eye, to go to North Dakota to get the guy who put the hit on her and Eddie. Things don't go as he'd planned, either.

Stella writes about criminals and cops, killers and cons, as if he knows the territory. This is one of those books that you rip through, eager to see who'll be the last man standing, as you never know who'll get the next bullet. Big, grim, boisterous, funny, and frightening all at once. Check it out.