The Broken Bow

Trusty Dawson, U.S. Deputy Marshal #2

by Larry D. Sweazy

Two-time Spur and Will Rogers Medallion Award-winning author Larry D. Sweazy returns with a bold, new adventure in his trigger-happy Western series, as U.S. Marshal Sam "Trusty" Dawson finds himself targeted for vengeance with his face on a wanted poster. Now he's up against every cutthroat gunslinger willing to put a bullet through his badge for the bounty...

Theodore Marberry is a grieving father. He groomed his daughter Jessica to take her rightful place among the wealthy families of St. Louis high society. Instead she married a common lawman whose tin star and sixgun made him worthy of her affection. She lost her life bringing his child into the world. Although bestowed with a beautiful granddaughter, Marberry is consumed with hate towards the baby's father.

U.S. Deputy Marshal Sam "Trusty" Dawson lives under a death sentence. His only crime was falling in love with a woman who saw more worth in his character than in his bank account. Now, every deadly manhunter, desperate bushwacker, and vicious outlaw throughout the Dakota Territory is looking to put the lawman six feet under to collect $1,000 in silver. But there aren't enough guns or bullets to stop Trusty from rescuing his daughter--and bringing Marberry to justice...

327 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 28, 2022

About the author

Larry D. Sweazy (pronounced: Swayzee) is the author of nineteen novels and five series: the Trusty Dawson series (LOST MOUNTAIN PASS, THE BROKEN BOW), WHERE I CAN SEE YOU, a standalone thriller, the Marjorie Trumaine Mystery series (SEE ALSO MURDER, SEE ALSO DECEPTION, SEE ALSO PROOF), the Sonny Burton series (A THOUSAND FALLING CROWS, THE LOST ARE THE LAST TO DIE, WINTER SEEKS OUT THE LONELY), the Lucas Fume Western series (VENGEANCE AT SUNDOWN, ESCAPE TO HANGTOWN), the Josiah Wolfe, Texas Ranger series (THE RATTLESNAKE SEASON, THE SCORPION TRAIL, THE BADGER'S REVENGE, THE COUGAR'S PREY, THE COYOTE TRACKER, THE GILA WARS, and THE RETURN OF THE WOLF), and THE DEVIL'S BONES, a standalone mystery.

He won the WWA Spur award for Best Short Fiction in 2005 and for Best Paperback Original in 2013, and the 2011 and 2012 Will Rogers Medallion Award for Western Fiction for books the Josiah Wolfe series. He was nominated for a Derringer award in 2007, and was a finalist in the Best Books of Indiana literary competition in 2010, and won in 2011 for THE SCORPION TRAIL. In 2013, Larry received the inaugural Elmer Kelton Fiction Book of the Year for THE COYOTE TRACKER, presented by the Academy of Western Artists. He received the Willa Award in 2019 and was shortlisted for the Indiana Authors Award in 2020, both for SEE ALSO PROOF. The Western Fictioneers (WF) awarded THE RETURN OF THE WOLF the Peacemaker Award for Best Western in 2020.

Larry has published over one hundred nonfiction articles and short stories, which have appeared in ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE; THE ADVENTURE OF THE MISSING DETECTIVE: AND 25 OF THE YEAR'S FINEST CRIME AND MYSTERY STORIES!; BOYS' LIFE; HARDBOILED; Amazon Shorts, and several other publications and anthologies. He is also a freelance indexer and written over 1000 indexes since 1998. He lives in Indiana with his wife, Rose, and is hard at work on his next novel.

Reviews

[HornFan2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to netgalley.com and Kensington Publishing for the advance ARC for my honest review and I purchased a copy from amazon.com. Something I like to do, to support one of my favorite authors.

It was the late author Bill Crider, with his 'Outrage at Blanco' novel that made me love revenge stories so much and in away revenge stories for me will always be a tribute to him.

One of my favorite niches in the Western genre is the lawman novels, with 'The Broken Bow' checks off every box, as too what you would want in Western Lawman yarn.

You have an intertwining storyline, that involves U.S. Deputy Marshall Trusty Dawson with his youth, reminiscing about his relationship with Jessica Marberry, about possibly being a dad, having a daughter with Jessica, the bounty placed on him by her dad, more about his time in the Military and a whorehouse in Missouri, where the Madam made him a man and it's repetitive.

Must say that U.S. Marshal Trusty Dawson is a real likable character, he's wiley, you don't want him on your trail, you get to see he's human, relatable for the reader and don't want to give too much away! I do think that with 'The Broken Bow', the storyline would have been better with less repetitive, a new storyline added, more details or the capture of Mrs. Marberry.

The Author Larry D. Sweazy, one of my favorite Western authors, if your itching to give the genre a try, you can't go wrong starting with him and you get another piece into the puzzle of whose one of the ghost writers for the Johnstone estate.

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Audible Audiobook: a disappointing sequel to Lost Mountain Pass. Too many flashbacks and retellings of parts of the first book disrupt the flow of the story. Review on Amazon.

[Jeff Tankersley · Rating 1 out of 5]

Deputy Marshall Trusty Dawson has been marked for death by a no-good power-broker and a criminal from his past, and we get alternating narratives via Dawson and the bad guy Gladdy O'Connor as they range about the freezing Dakota Territory in the winter of 1888. Dawson gets flashback sequences to his childhood and younger days that set up more conflicts and adventures in the current setting as the story moves along.

Dawson has an illegitimate daughter out there and an assignment of his own he is hunting down, a rape-accused Dakota Sioux named Charlie Littlefoot who has escaped up to Canada.

Verdict: A kind of boring and ugly read, twice as long as it has to be, and without any relatable or interesting characters; I simply didn't care about any of these folks or situations they were in. The crime being investigated, the buddy buddy talk between the white and the Cheyenne, and the woman's loving infidelity with the Sioux outlaw, are supposed to be some insightful bridges between races but instead are just eyeroll-inducing everyday trope-fests. Quit on page 147 (of 354).

Jeff's Rating: 1 / 5 (Bad)
movie rating if made into a movie: R

[Denice Langley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The western genre has so few good authors who lend their skills to characters that keep this era alive. This is Book #2 in the US Marshall "Trusty" Dawson series. This book finds the marshall fighting a personal battle. His wife has died in child birth and her family has sworn a reward for Trusty's death and taken his daughter. As he uses every resource he has to find her, he'll have to fight off those who would collect the reward and leave his daughter an orphan.

[Mariam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Compelling storyline, but the dialog was noticeably awkward throughout, like the author was trying too hard to make the characters sound like they would have in the 1880s western frontier of the US. I enjoyed Sweazy's Thousand Falling Crows far more.

[Scott Mcleod · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent series, book 2, hope there is more a thinking man's western!

[Zacus Strunkus · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was pretty good Western, though the dialogue felt a little forced and clunky at times. Many characters felt flat to me as well, but I enjoyed it regardless.