Description:

Even with some of the toughest hombres and nastiest outlaws roaming the Southwest, bestselling author James D. Doss’s seven-foot-tall rancher and sometime tribal investigator Charlie Moon does a fair job on the side of the good guys. So it’s no surprise that he gets the call when the widow Loyola Montoya starts making a fuss about witches. Witches? She swears there’s a whole midnight brood lurking  in the woods just off her property, mocking her with lewd songs and harassing her with the carcasses of dead animals. When no one takes her seriously—she has been known to cry wolf from time to time—she takes matters into her own hands, with disastrous results. By the time Charlie arrives, it’s too late to save her, and while he knows he can’t bring her back, that doesn’t mean he can’t help the widow get her revenge after all. Told in Doss’s whimsical style, *The Widow’s Revenge* is a wonderfully tall tale that requires wide-open spaces and larger-than-life heroes like Charlie Moon to saddle up and make sure that justice is served. ** ### From Publishers Weekly When witches bother widow Loyola Montoya at the start of Doss's enjoyable 14th mystery to feature part-time Ute tribal investigator Charlie Moon (after 2008's *Snake Dreams*), the strange old Apache woman phones Charlie, the only man she knows in Granite Creek, Colo., who will listen to her complaints. By the time Charlie arrives at Loyola's remote 10-acre farm, she's perished in a kitchen fire apparently caused by a fallen kerosene lamp. Was her death accidental, or were the people camped on nearby land owned by the Blue Diamond Natural Gas Company somehow involved? As Moon, FBI agent Lila Mae McTeague and police chief Scott Parris pursue what turns into a criminal investigation, the violence only gets worse. While Doss successfully evokes the mysticism of traditional Native American storytelling, his choppy chapters with their frequent point-of-view shifts may frustrate new readers. Series fans familiar with his style will welcome spending time with old friends. *(Nov.)* Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. ### Review Praise for James D. Doss “*Snake Dreams* is the thirteenth novel in this series, and since it’s a very good one—funny, smart, and totally different—it’s a great place for readers to discover Moon.” —*Toronto* *Globe and Mail* on *Snake Dreams *“Outstanding… The narrator clearly is having fun as he unveils his tale, liberally laced with Native American lore, character idiosyncrasies, comedic asides, and a plot that weaves and twists like a highway in the Rockies.” —*Library Journal* (starred review) on *Snake Dreams *“James D. Doss’s novels about Charlie Moon… feel as if the author is sitting around a campfire, spinning a tall tale that engulfs a circle of listeners.… Doss’s tale is evocative of the area and of Indian lore, and his chatty, down-home style shines.” —*Florida Sun-Sentinel* on *Three Sisters *“Doss’s trademark humor keeps Charlie and Scott wisecracking as the plot spins smartly along to an unpredictable ending.… The most recent Charlie Moon mysteries still charm us with Western voices and ways.” —*Rocky Mountain News* on *Three Sisters *“Doss does for the Utes what Tony Hillerman has done for the Navajo.” —*The Denver Post*