Vengeance Rider: a Ralph Compton novel by Joseph A. West (audiobook read by Terry Evans)

Author Joseph A. West's second novel under the Ralph Compton name, Vengeance Rider, is a vast improvement over his first, Doomsday Rider. The plot takes place ten years after the previous book. Buck Fletcher is now retired and married, with a daughter who has a terminal illness. Only a trip overseas can possibly save her life, but Fletcher doesn't have the money. The only chance he has is to take his best horse to a race in another part of the country; if he wins, he get the $10,000 he needs.

But the plot's not the part of Vengeance Rider I liked. It's the characterizations. Fletcher is more mature and grounded this time around, and he meets up with Doc Holliday on his way to the horse race.

West's portrait of Holliday is fantastic and filled with the things that make this mythic figure so popular — though few authors have been able to make him quite so interesting. It's one of the few times I've seen the old dentist practically "leap off the page," so to speak. Figuratively speaking, I often felt while listening to Vengeance Rider (again read with skill by Terry Evans) that Doc Holliday was riding in the seat next to me. I commend Joseph A. West for taking this necessary step up in quality. Now, I will be much more likely to pick up other books by him.

Doomsday Rider: a Ralph Compton novel by Joseph A. West (audiobook read by Terry Evans)

When people bad-mouth Westerns, this is the type of Western they mean: the kind that seems to be just be telling an often-told story over again, with very little plot (except for the typical revenge motif) and characters who speak and think in cliches. Here's the summary from the audiobook version of Doomsday Rider:

Framed for a murder that he did not commit, Buck Fletcher is given the chance to redeem his reputation by rescuing a senator's disgraced daughter from a war-torn region of Arizona, braving a band of renegade Apaches, the senator's minions, and a determined bounty hunter along the way.

Pretty straightforward, wouldn't you say? People in this world are either good or bad, and author Joseph A. West is perfectly willing to keep things that way.

I'm usually more interested in Westerns that try to stretch the genre in one way or another, but that is not to say that Doomsday Rider is not a pleasant read. After all, readers looking for their idea of the "typical" Western will likely be pleased by West's second tale featuring Buck Fletcher (author Ralph Compton is deceased; various authors are continuing his legacy in a series of novels that retain his name on the cover).

I found it satisfying as an audiobook. Reader Terry Evans's range of voices gets increasingly more surprising as the book continues. At one point, the text calls for a "fine, high tenor" to sing a song with new lyrics to the tune of "John Brown's Body," and Evans gives it his all, showing that he is more than up to the challenge. Evans's reading, in fact, was good enough to make it easier to overlook Doomsday Rider's other flaws. But for a much better example of a well-written Western, pick up Vengeance Rider (this book's sequel), also read by Evans, or Rio Largo, another Ralph Compton novel written by David Robbins.