Crow 3: Tears of Blood

by James W. Marvin

Know what Crow used to say about livin’ by your guns? Said it made him like a kind of alchemist. Said he was the first man in history to turn lead into gold. Yeah. Meanest son of a bitch ever. Crow. No other name. Just Crow. Dressed in black from head to toe. The meanest man in the bullet-scarred annals of the West. Nobody ever turned their back on him. A cold voice in the shadows, a vengeful angel of death … Time was when Crow found himself holed up in Dead Hawk, Arizona. A time when the man in black wound up in jail. Killed a punk kid in self-defense. Then set loose to bring back Mayor Abe Varity and his wildcat wife, Martha. Kidnapped by a band of Apaches. Or were they? Whoever it was, Crow was out on the killing trail and folks had better watch out. Best not to tangle with Crow if you wanted to live … ABOUT THE AUTHOR Laurence James was a member of the original 'Piccadilly Cowboys'. In 1972 he became a full-time freelance author and journalist and for many years thereafter published short science fiction stories in both Britain and the U.S. In 1974 he published his first novel, Earth Lies Sleeping which introduces galactic secret agent Simon Rack. The series is shortly to appear in electronic form under the PP imprint. At around the same time, Laurence published a fantasy saga of Hells Angels under the name 'Mick Norman'. The four books, Angels from Hell, Angel Challenge, Guardian Angels and Angels on my Mind, were later repackaged as The Angel Chronicles by Creation Books. Laurence went on to enjoy a highly prolific career, publishing dozens of novels under his own name as well as various pen names. Today Laurence is best-remembered for his post apocalyptic Deathlands series, for which he penned more than thirty novels under the name 'James Axler'. He was also a gifted western writer, and among his many western credits are such series as Crow, Apache, Herne the Hunter, Caleb Thorn and Gunslinger. His other series work included The Witches as 'James Darke', Wolfshead as by 'Arthur Frazier', The Vikings as 'Neil Langholm', Survival 2000 as 'James McPhee', the Confessions series as 'Jonathan May', The Killers as 'Klaus Netzen' and The Eagles as 'Andrew Quiller, plus two stand-alone novels as 'Richard Haigh'. His frequent collaborators included Terry Harknett, John Harvey, Angus Wells and Kenneth Bulmer.

128 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 29, 2012

Reviews

[Norbit Roche · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another solid, if unremarkable Crow. In the previous outings I got the idea Crow is a true anti-hero; amoral in all traditional ways, but with some sort of code that's respectable, maybe. This one kind of muddies that, and I can't tell if it's because Crow is a very complicated character, or if the writing is just inconsistent. In a rare scene of sympathy, Crow gets taken prisoner (actually, taken prisoner twice throughout the novel). It's a really awkward scene that only marginally makes sense. Then it ends with another absurd notion from Crow that made my head spin, although this one is played clearly for shock factor, which is a bit disappointing.

Still, Crow himself is genuinely a creepy dude, with his wire frame and feathery voice, that has to employ strategy to get near his enemies to make use of his sawed-off, holstered shotgun. He's an interesting character, however flawed that may be.