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Slocum #275
Slocum and the Gravedigger
Slocum's old rival is hired to kill him-and you've never seen a showdown like this.
192 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published December 31, 2001
4 people want to read
About the author
Jake Logan
539 books8 followersJake Logan is a pen name of a number of authors of "Slocum Western" series.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 3, 2025
The more I read this, the more it went from a *** "nothing special" read, to a ** "needs improvement," to a * "geez, at least try to be MEMORABLY bad." It just does not do anything with the paper it was printed on. The writer is either lacking in talent or passion or both. It's a sea of bland, flavorless prose detailing a pointless, an almost derisively unambitious storyline.
It starts out reasonably enough. After taming a string of wild horses, Slocum sets out with a young buck who has just inherited a ranch to get a load of the place and see what's what.
(The young buck, brazenly named Sammy Golden, gets his own romance subplot to hit the required three sex scenes, meaning Slocum is once more a one-woman man this time around. Which is just a pet peeve. If a Bond movie can have the guy sleep with three women in one movie and hit multiplexes, you'd think a book named SLOCUM could let the dude tomcat around a bit, right? Is that irrational? Maybe. But I don't see anyone else reviewing these things.)
Once they get there, they find that the evil Smoot (yes, Smoot) has taken over the valley with a phony land grant and is forcing all the ranchers to pay exorbitant rent in an attempt to force them out so he can take over everything. It's hinted that he has an ulterior motive to all this, but like a lot of Slocum and the Gravedigger, nothing comes of this. Later on, he just starts forcing people to sign over their deeds to him, with no indication of how he expects to get away with this tissue-thin scheme when everyone and their mother is onto him and he's even killed a U.S. Marshall just to keep the enterprise going a few days more. There's such a lack of thought put into this villain and his plot that I felt insulted.
It's like Dr. Evil saying he's just going to steal a nuke and threaten to blow something up, only that's supposed to be a joke. I realize this is a Western, there are only so many things you can do without throwing in a giant mechanical spider, but for the love of Pete, I'm not asking a lot here. Just some verve, some imagination, a little bit of humanity--some clue that the writer is having a bit of fun. Instead, we get the most lazy prose you'll see outside of a LinkedIn post. No poetry, no description, no vividness, just... this.
"The men at the front windows cut loose, almost immediately filling the air in the room with smoke and the smell of gunpowder. The noise made Smoot cringe. But shots were returned. Bullets crashed through windows and shattered various objects in the room. Smoot got down on his knees behind the desk."
oH wOW it'S lIkE i'M rEAlly tHeRe
The twist this time around is that the villain hires an anti-Slocum, an ee-vil gunslinger who's only in it for the money.
Which is such a silly/awesome idea that it seems impossible for a writer not to have some fun with it, but the biggest the author goes is naming him P.T. Graves (what is WITH the names in this book?). I mean, shouldn't he be named something like Dick Black or Hardy Cockwell or something if he's really an anti-Slocum?
But I digress. Despite this easy lay-up, the author does precisely nil with it. Graves and Slocum were on the same side of a mercenary assignment once, but we get no details or flashbacks or anything to give them an actual connection. Graves himself isn't intimidating as some super-effective villain because all we see him do is take out a Marshall named "Road" Agent (okay, seriously, who is naming these characters, Hirohiko Araki?) who himself hasn't been shown to be a badass, since all he really does is get killed by Graves.
Maybe I could forgive all this telling instead of showing if we actually got the huge showdown we're promised between Slocum and Anti-Slocum, but that's a negatory too! Instead of any kind of climax, Graves gets shot in the back by Slocum's Girl of the Week before they do anything more than banter a bit. We don't even get a showdown!
This is pissing me off, I'm dignifying this book too much by talking about it so much. Of all the three hundred Slocums you're certainly not going to read, definitely don't read this one.
It starts out reasonably enough. After taming a string of wild horses, Slocum sets out with a young buck who has just inherited a ranch to get a load of the place and see what's what.
(The young buck, brazenly named Sammy Golden, gets his own romance subplot to hit the required three sex scenes, meaning Slocum is once more a one-woman man this time around. Which is just a pet peeve. If a Bond movie can have the guy sleep with three women in one movie and hit multiplexes, you'd think a book named SLOCUM could let the dude tomcat around a bit, right? Is that irrational? Maybe. But I don't see anyone else reviewing these things.)
Once they get there, they find that the evil Smoot (yes, Smoot) has taken over the valley with a phony land grant and is forcing all the ranchers to pay exorbitant rent in an attempt to force them out so he can take over everything. It's hinted that he has an ulterior motive to all this, but like a lot of Slocum and the Gravedigger, nothing comes of this. Later on, he just starts forcing people to sign over their deeds to him, with no indication of how he expects to get away with this tissue-thin scheme when everyone and their mother is onto him and he's even killed a U.S. Marshall just to keep the enterprise going a few days more. There's such a lack of thought put into this villain and his plot that I felt insulted.
It's like Dr. Evil saying he's just going to steal a nuke and threaten to blow something up, only that's supposed to be a joke. I realize this is a Western, there are only so many things you can do without throwing in a giant mechanical spider, but for the love of Pete, I'm not asking a lot here. Just some verve, some imagination, a little bit of humanity--some clue that the writer is having a bit of fun. Instead, we get the most lazy prose you'll see outside of a LinkedIn post. No poetry, no description, no vividness, just... this.
"The men at the front windows cut loose, almost immediately filling the air in the room with smoke and the smell of gunpowder. The noise made Smoot cringe. But shots were returned. Bullets crashed through windows and shattered various objects in the room. Smoot got down on his knees behind the desk."
oH wOW it'S lIkE i'M rEAlly tHeRe
The twist this time around is that the villain hires an anti-Slocum, an ee-vil gunslinger who's only in it for the money.
Which is such a silly/awesome idea that it seems impossible for a writer not to have some fun with it, but the biggest the author goes is naming him P.T. Graves (what is WITH the names in this book?). I mean, shouldn't he be named something like Dick Black or Hardy Cockwell or something if he's really an anti-Slocum?
But I digress. Despite this easy lay-up, the author does precisely nil with it. Graves and Slocum were on the same side of a mercenary assignment once, but we get no details or flashbacks or anything to give them an actual connection. Graves himself isn't intimidating as some super-effective villain because all we see him do is take out a Marshall named "Road" Agent (okay, seriously, who is naming these characters, Hirohiko Araki?) who himself hasn't been shown to be a badass, since all he really does is get killed by Graves.
Maybe I could forgive all this telling instead of showing if we actually got the huge showdown we're promised between Slocum and Anti-Slocum, but that's a negatory too! Instead of any kind of climax, Graves gets shot in the back by Slocum's Girl of the Week before they do anything more than banter a bit. We don't even get a showdown!
This is pissing me off, I'm dignifying this book too much by talking about it so much. Of all the three hundred Slocums you're certainly not going to read, definitely don't read this one.
Displaying 1 of 1 review