This was a very hard novel to get through. It started out intriguing. However, there was not much of a story. Many of the scenes dragged on. Also, I could not get into the characters.

I really liked the concept of this book and the switch between the modern story and the love letters. But, it felt like it could have been two books since the connection between the two stories was tenuous at best. I get it that the theme was lost love and that there was a shoot out between bad guys and not so bad guys but it really felt forced. I say “not so bad” because they were really not good guys, just like Wyatt Earp, his brothers and Doc Holiday. Actually the book would have worked without the love letters and been just as good. I really hated the ending and cannot explain why without including a spoiler. But it all just seemed so unnecessary.

This book is FANTASTIC and so moving. Iove Doc Holliday. Would love to see this made into a movie. Highly recommend this book.

An outstanding thriller with well-developed characters and enough gunfire to out-battle the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral! Highly recommended.

A modern-day Western this remarkably violent book is fast-paced and well-written. The starting point of the action is love letters written between Doc Holliday and the love of his life, his cousin. Supposedly destroyed by the cousin after she became a nun, they turn up. The letters, which are lovely punctuate this amazing novel.

This mystery/thriller will not appeal to everyone, as there is a lot going on. I thoroughly enjoyed it, however. The historical details made it easy to imagine the setting this took place in. Great writing!

The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday by David Corbett is a thriller concerning the letters in the title. It is present day story with the letters making an appearance throughout. This story of Old West artifacts and love letters has reformed characters, along with some unsavory ones.

The book is based on fact about well-known Holliday’s love, but the rest reads like a current fight leading up to the OK Corral. The story seems simple but soon turns complex. Characters are not always what they seem or are to be trusted. In fact, the entire book was not what I thought it would be. Still an exciting western thriller with David Corbett having a way in describing the western landscape as well as the characters.

An ARC of the book was given to me by the publisher through Net Galley which I voluntarily chose to read and reviewed. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Lisa Balamaro is an intelligent and gifted, albeit rudderless, young attorney who has drifted into a successful art law practice in San Francisco. A dream come true, right? One day, her cowboy client, former art forger, Tuck Mercer, brings her a deal: negotiate the sale of the recently discovered long-lost love letters of Doc Holliday to a western artifact collector. Recently discovered, these letters between Doc and his cousin, Mattie, who allegedly was the inspiration for Margaret Mitchell’s character, Melanie Hamilton, are highly desirable.
No big deal. Lisa flies to Arizona with Rayella Vargas, the owner of the letters, to meet the buyer at a remote hotel of his choosing. As soon as the conference room door is closed, all hell breaks loose.
Faced with layers of deception and intrigue Lisa does not yet comprehend, our young lawyer does what she knows how to do best: files suit and goes to court. While she’s lawyering, every other character is doing what they know how to do best: the crooked judge, the shyster lawyer, the cowboy vigilantes, and a small squad of battle-hardened Marines at the beck and call of good old Tuck.
The novel alternates between the contemporary story and gorgeously-written letters as they trace the separation of the star-crossed lovers. For those who enjoy the beautiful use of language, there is much to be enjoyed.
The author also masterly renders an out-of-control courtroom drama weaving in the attorney’s thought processes as she runs through procedures and arguments in a way that is understandable to the lay person, credible to an experienced attorney, and creates an exciting tension-filled scene. After court, the drama continues to escalate all the way to the end. It’s one of those stories that I know will stay with me for as I sort it all out.

The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday is a tickle to the imagination. This is an intriguing what if. This thrilling mystery will take you down several paths and each is as exciting as the last.

I had high hopes for this novel, and ultimately, I was disappointed. I strongly disliked all the characters and felt no sympathy for any of them. The escalation to violent action happened almost immediately and continued throughout the novel. I found it gratuitous and unexciting.
The only saving grace was the correspondence between Doc and Mattie. Sadly, the letters were few and far between.

David Corbett has an excellent writing style. The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday is a modern mystery tale with letters - real or not - which were believed to be long destroyed, between John Henry 'Doc' Holliday and his cousin Mattie, his childhood sweetheart, who eventually became Sister Mary Melanie of the Sisters of Mercy. This is a book I could not put down. The historical details are authentic, the background word pictures of the Arizona foothills and desert are true and the modern story leaves you at times breathless. A really good book. I can recommend it happily to friends and family - all Arizona and New Mexico natives particularly - and western history buffs will love it as well.

Lisa Balamaro is a lawyer in San Francisco who is approached by an art provenance consultant she had handled transactions for previously. Tuck Mercer was an excellent salesman. Unfortunately he had done years in prison for producing some very good western art forgeries, but on his release from prison he had talked himself into the job of authenticating western art for the same collectors and museums to whom he had sold his previous 'work'. Tuck had come across a packet of letters, purported to be to and from Doc and Mattie, and having been passed down in a convoluted fashion through the generations of the family of a servant in Matties' families' household. Their current owner, Rayella Vargas, would like to sell the letters. Their provenance will be very difficult to prove but the letters themselves are fascinating. Tuck has found a potential black market buyer, a Judge in the Tombstone, AZ area, and he would like Lisa to handle the transaction. It looked like a simple little job. Lisa and Rayella pack for a day or two in sunny Arizona. They do not know they are going to war.

There are some really special quotes from a Dutch philosopher, Baruch Spinoza who was also suffering with TB scattered through this work that will make you stop and think twice. And the letters are a very clear profile of the life of Doc Holliday through his eyes, and those of the only woman he will ever love. The woman who will always love him. This is not the same Doc Holliday of films and dime novels. You may find that you understand him a lot better than you did before.

I received a free electronic copy of this novel from Netgalley, David Corbett, and Black Opal Books in exchange for an honest review. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I am so pleased to have found this author! He is one I will follow.

This is a weird one. I was expecting a dual-perspective historical, and ended up with an art forgery thriller mixed with a dash of revenge thriller. It had some problems. First of all, the pace was off - Doc’s letters where sprinkled throughout and, while they were interesting and well written and told their own story within the main story, they really broke up the action. This is death to a thriller.

Secondly, the main plot point (the letters) didn’t justify the action. Calling them “the most notorious letter in the old West” doesn’t make it so. They were love letters outlining a previously known relationship. Interesting? Yes. Valuable? Probably. Deserving of the bat-guano crazy carnage outlined in this book? Nuh-uh.

Lastly - and most damaging - NONE of the characters were likeable or sympathetic. Disappointing.

I enjoyed this book. The modern part of the story was slow moving to me, but the letters were extremely interesting and held my interest. It was an unusual look at a man that very little was known. I would recommend this book to anyone.

When the long-lost love letters between Doc Holliday and his cousin Mattie reappear years after the Holliday family swore the correspondence was destroyed, Lisa Balamaro (an arts lawyer) and Tuck Mercer (reformed Western arts forger) work together to sell the unauthenticated letters on the black market. When the buyer – a corrupt judge in the Tombstone area – steals the letters, Lisa does everything she can to rectify the situation on behalf of her client, Rayella Vargas. While Lisa works on the right side of the law, others take more extreme measures to get the letters back into Rayella’s possession and leave more victims than there were following the Gunfight at the OK Corral.

The actual letters between Doc Holliday and his cousin are not the main focus of the novel, though they are included sporadically throughout. And the content of the letters have nothing to do with the overall plot of the novel. It is the fact that these letters exist that drives the plot of THE LONG-LOST LOVE LETTERS OF DOC HOLLIDAY. Whether the letters are authentic or fake remains a question throughout the novel, and that is what sets off the explosive drama surrounding the letters. THE LONG-LOST LOVE LETTERS OF DOC HOLLIDAY is an intense and interesting crime drama about art forgery and the fallout of the forgery.

I didn’t exactly like THE LONG-LOST LOVE LETTERS OF DOC HOLLIDAY, but I didn’t hate it either. Mostly I was ambivalent towards the novel and the characters. The heroes of the novel are not really heroes – they’re just slightly better than the villains – and I found that I couldn’t really connect with any of them enough to care about what happened to them. This is a great novel for anyone interested in art forgery or crime dramas. The plot is stimulating, and there is a lot of action and suspense. For anyone reading this novel because of their fascination with Doc Holliday…well, the novel really has nothing to do with Doc Holliday.

I was expecting more of the historical fiction, by the title and cover of the book. This is a art forgery thriller, using the "letters" as very much a side note. It was fine as a thriller, but I felt mislead and feel readers will be too.

I loved this book. I have been to Tombstone multiple times so I was eager to read it. These letters were supposedly lost but surfaced in the hands of Tuck, a reformed art forger. Lisa is an arts lawyer attracted to Tuck. These letters were written between Doc Holliday and his childhood sweetheart. Since the letters may never be able to be authenticated. Tuck hired Lisa to sell them on the black market. A cheating judge gets involved and what will happen to the letters, are they real, will this be another stand off in Tombstone.? I going now to rewatch Tombstone and look at my pictures that I took there. I received this book from Net Galley for an honest review and no compensation.

This is a difficult book to rate. On one hand it works on so many levels, while on the other, it suffers from a lack of identity.

The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday is part legal thriller, part western, part crime, part romance, part black-ops. That's a lot of parts to make a cohesive story.

Lisa Balamaro is an arts lawyer who knows her stuff. Tuck, her love interest, deals in selling artifacts and art to the wealthy; mostly fakes crafted by his own hands, and some genuine pieces. When he stumbles across some letters from Doc Holliday to Sister Mary Melanie , the owner of which claiming their authenticity, he enlists Lisa to help facilitate the sale.

Things turn south pretty quickly with Lisa finding herself in a battle against a retired judge and his band of thugs who claim the letters are fake but steal them nonetheless.

The aforementioned letters are spattered throughout the book at the end of some of the chapters. They're pretty sappy and can generally be glossed over if you’re not all that interested in the content, it makes little difference to the plot aside from the romantic comparisons between Doc and Mattie and Tuck and Lisa, which, even then doesn’t really ‘add’ much to the overall flow of the narrative.

My rating: 3/5 stars, The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday reads like it would make a good midday movie.