Review: Pray for Death - 5 stars

In the book Pray for Death by William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone, the reader is introduced to a young Deputy US Marshal, Will Tanner.  Tanner is about as upstanding a man as you might find anywhere in the west.  Once he sets his sights on a wrong doer in the Indian Territory of Oklahoma, he will pursue and pursue.  He makes friends easily and treats his targets with respect as long as they are not truly evil people. 

As a young man, his head has been turned by a lovely young lady in Ft. Smith, Arkansas where the Marshal Service for the Indian Territory is headquartered.  Like many a man, he begins to have second thoughts as his intended and her mother planned this major wedding.  He’d prefer to just go stand-up in front of a preacher and get it done without all the hullabaloo.  

He is very dedicated to the marshalling job and this has created a few moments of anxiety on the part of his future wife as her father was also a lawman and was lost during fulfilling his duties.  She is rightfully worried about Tanner’s safety. He seems to be oblivious to the dangers or have a very high opinion of his prowess, which is great.

During a supposedly easy pickup of some prisoners in the Territory, he and another Deputy meet up with an old friend of Will’s – a Choctaw lawman, Jim Little Eagle.  They have helped each other in the past and Little Eagle may get drawn in again as the easy pick-up develops into something more.  This is where the story gets interesting as he discovers there is a cabal of bad men who want to set up a hidey-place for outlaws coming up from Texas where there is very little law; generally only the US Marshals enforce the law in the Territory and they are days away in Ft. Smith.  Native lawmen cannot legally arrest a white man. 

It is this cabal that leads Will on a merry chase including gunfights, killings, arrests, escapes, rearrests, near hangings, illegally crossing into Texas, and other similar western happenings of the time.  Through it all the integrity of Deputy US Marshal Will Tanner remains unsullied.  There are repented and unrepentant criminals who pop in and out of the story line. Rest assured that U.S. Deputy Marshal Will Tanner will treat each one fairly.

Will’s marriage is to take place on Christmas Day but will Tanner be able to make it back in time from an extended tracking of criminals or will he have to look for a new wife?  While on the trail Will Tanner loses track of the exact date, but his impending scheduled wedding is still on his mind. The race is getting the criminals to justice, protecting the citizens from them, and getting himself back in time to tie the knot. 

Lots of storylines run through the book, making it a delightful read and making it hard to put down as one situation morphs into another. The authors have done a great job of keeping the reader’s interest and the characters feel more than the traditional wooden ones that are sometimes apparent in a western novel.  Definitely I would recommend this to anyone interested in reading about the happenings as Oklahoma was first opened basically as the Indian Territory.

This preview copy was provided by #NetGalley for my review.