Cutthroat Trail by David R Lewis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Urban Dictionary offers this definition for the term “book hangover”: “When you’ve finished a book and you suddenly return to the real world, but the real world feels incomplete or surreal because you’re still living in the world of the book.”

I didn’t intend to read all seven of David R. Lewis’s Trail series one right after the other, but I did it. And now they’re done. It’s time to read something else. But I don’t particularly want to. I need an eighth book, man! What’s Little Bill doing now? Don’t hold out on me!

Well, anyway, in this installment, Rubin is the one to call in Marion and Homer when a new friend of his is murdered. The villain in this case likes to cut the throats of his victims, and he just happens to be the man who laid the final blow to Arkansas Bill Cole, which just doubles Rubin’s desire to bring him some Western justice. I found the resolution in this one to be a little anti-climactic, but honestly, the whole series proves the adage that it isn’t about the destination, it’s about the journey to get there. The real story is always about the relationship of the three men and their encounters on the trail. In a real positive, we meet another interesting new character, and he doesn’t die.

I got to thinking I was maybe too hard on these books, only giving them a 4 out of 5 rating in light of how much I enjoyed them. I guess it’s the English teacher snob in me coming out. I loved these books and will rave about them to anyone I think will read such stories, but despite having nice progressive character growth, there’s no deep symbolism or allusions or other fancy literary devices I make my students learn, and so I held back on the top rating. Maybe it isn’t fair. I know I sure did enjoy my time on the trail and look forward to Lewis picking it up again.

As always, Lewis reading his own words was half the enjoyment here. His writing gives the three men (and minor characters) different syntax and vocabularies, but he really brings that to life when he speaks it. I’m very glad to have discovered Lewis through algorithms on Audible.com.

Read this series!

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