I went through a phase where I read every western I could get my hands on. As all phases do, this one passed. Problem was that the stories and language became rather routine and overly familiar. When I discovered that the writer of the Amos Walker series, Loren Estleman also wrote highly regarded westerns I thought I'd try another fix.

Estleman is really a very good writer and the language is addictive as much as the plot which is fun if familiar. It's 1881 in New Mexico and Page Murdock, a deputy U.S. Marshall in the employ of Judge Harlan Blackthorne, of Montana, has been sent incognito and ostensibly retired, to arrest and bring to justice the Baronet brothers. They had killed a man who had saved the judge's life during the Civil War. His task is complicated in that one of the brothers is reputed to have been killed and the other is a sheriff of Socorro County.

Estleman has a way with words and paints a vivid picture of a bleak landscape where the desert is "ablaze with that dry heat that opens your pores and sucks out the moisture like lemon carbonate through a straw." The town is called City of Widows because the males are regularly killed off in gun battles between banditos, revolutionaries, Apaches, and ranchers. His characters are wonderful, particularly the carpenter sheriff and Murdock's old lover/enemy Poker Annie who is truly a despicable woman. ( )