Longarm and the Holy Smokes Gang

Longarm continues to be one of my fictional, fantasy heroes. He likes justice and goes out of his way to make sure it's surely done. Along the trail, he successfully does the typical western shoot-outs and always finds willing ladies for romance. Being a US Marshal working out of Denver, Longarm is apt to be anywhere in the Old West, and the author keeps the stories real with accurate research about locales and history. I like this series and recommend it to others for easy, laid back reading. The author makes the Old West come alive!

I never heard of the Longarm titles until recently. So, this is my first one to read. And it certainly won't be the last. This is one hell of a western yarn! It's an extremely well-told, fast-paced story that has lots of characters, and loaded with action, adventure, scenery, violence, and sex. Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long, (Longarm), is one cool character, who has a great sense of humor, even in the most dire situations. His dialogue is wonderful. I found myself smiling repeatedly, and even laughing aloud several times. This is a fun read. Try it. You'll like it. I'm going back for more. I hear Longarm & The Wolf Women is even better...

This is the March 2007 Episode in the long running Longarm Series. As with any series, some episodes are better than others. This is one of the better ones; as a matter of fact,it's the best I've read for a long time. Longarm gets sent to Lulu City ,west of Colorado Springs , to mine country ,to find out who is preying on ore trains taking gold to the U.S. Mint. It's a great Old West story,filled with excitement,train robberies,an exciting travel adventure with a travelling companion full of surprises,shoot-outs in the canyons,a little Old West mining town filled with one- of -a-kind-characters,and a storyline that keeps you stimulated from beginning to end. We get a great glimpse into the way things are done in a frontier town,what the surrounding countryside is like and the way gold mines ,both legal and otherwise operated. When Longarm encounters the "bad guys" we get some of the most outnumbered battles you'll ever see our hero get into.This has to be one of the roughest assignments Longarm has ever been on.How much punishment can he take? Even after this episode, we see he still hasn't met is limit; but he comes close to it.Rather than heading back to Denver immediately;he gets a wire sent to Marshal Billy Vail saying he'll be taking a week's R & R to recover from his ordeals and injuries. The tale leaves you wondering if this recovery will finally do him in! One of the things I enjoy about the Longarm series in when the stories tie in with the history of the period.Here we see reference to a Jay Gould. I am quite familiar with that name as a writer ,Biologist and Natural History writer,but not from this time period. A search on the net, and I find he was one of the big Railroad Barons of the time;and a very colorful character in his own right. When you read Longarm novels,you are never in doubt about him bringing the owlhoots to justice.When he finally gets a bead on this bunch it looks like the odds are unsurmountable,and they almost were! A great read ,and the kind of saga I look forward to reading in this series. Longarm Series Information It's funny how things happen at just the right time. I've been reading Longarm for several years and have quite a large collection of them. I have worked at making a complete list of numbers and titles of the series. I had to do it piecemeal from the lists of a number of recent novels included,usually at the back.Just recemtly,I stumbled on a Website that is fantastic. A search of FANTASTIC FICTION will get you to a Website that lists all the books any author of fiction has written. Look under Evans,Tabor and there you will find all the Longarm novels listed ,by number and year published;including the Giant Novels. As far as I can tell ,all the numbers and titles jive;but some of the publication years are incorret. For instance;#244 "Longarm and the Devil's Sister" shows being published in 2001 ,when it was actually published in April 1999. Not only that,there are pictures of the front cover