Charlie Moon is an ex Ute Reservation Policeman, currently owner and operator of a very big ranch in Montana and is also a part-time tribal investigator. He is very tall, strong and very smart; in short a bigger than life character. This story begins with Charlie getting a call from an old Apache woman who lives way out in the desert on a small farm where she has lived all her eighty-some years calling Charlie to tell him that there are four “witches” camped on her property. She wants Charlie to come out and run them off. Not a stranger to these sorts of strange requests from this sweet old lady Charlie agrees but he puts off his visit until the following day.
Charlie arrives at the old farm and finds the sweet old lady lying dead on her kitchen floor. Her body had been partially burned, having been doused in kerosene. When the ME and local town police arrive they determine that the old woman probably had a heart attack or stroke, fell and knocked the kerosene lantern down to the floor where it broke and splashed burning kerosene over her body. She was dead before she was burned.
But later the old Apache’s spirit visits Charlie and tells him two things. First, he shouldn’t blame himself because even if he had left the night before he would not have arrived before she died and second, the four witches had been planning a robbery. She left Charlie some obscure clues about where and when this robbery was to take place. Charlie figured out the clues and arrived at the ABC Hardware store in time to stop them. He knocked the two who had been on watch at the front and back of the hardware store out and had to kill the other two as they were in the process of torturing and threatening to kill the store owner to get him to open his safe.
It turns out that these robbers were part of a vicious gang that not only robbed and killed people but sometimes roasted their bodies over a fire, slathered in BBQ sauce and had a human feast. The gang ruthlessly killed the State Police guard, the entire nursing staff and thirteen patients at the local hospital to free the two that Charlie had knocked out. And, it is certain that the gang will get Charlie Moon too.
The exciting last third of this strange story involves Charlie going from defense to offense and setting up his ranch and himself as bait then fighting it out with his enemies. “The Widow’s Revenge” is a preposterous, larger than life, exciting and often very funny tale of a wild west super-hero doing what all super-heroes do and protecting the weak while defeating the evil making the west a safer place in which to raise your families and live a peaceful life. It is a fine and very entertaining story rating an 8 of 10 on the Weaver meter. I will look for more books by James Doss.
