I love the Western genre. There are so many different authors with differing styles and ideas of what the Wild West should look like, that you can easily find yourself moving from one blazing gun fight to another.
Lou Profit is a bounty hunter. Never an easy job, in the era of gunfights and saloons, it's a crap shoot every time you ride into town. Add in the harsh winter conditions of the Dakotas and Lou is working double time to catch his bad guys. In the end, the bad guys lose and that's what counts. The story to get to that point will keep you pulling for Lou and wincing every time he has to duck for cover. Western lovers will definitely enjoy this book.

Really quick enjoyable story. Would recommend to fans of this genre. Great story, and plot. An author I will look for.

Lou Prophet and Louisa Bonaventure (the Vengeance Queen), the stars of Peter Brandvold's Blood at Sundown (Penguin Random House 2018), Book 2 of Lou Prophet Bounty Hunter series, are a two-person bounty hunting team known for their ability to catch the worst of the worst and survive shootouts no one else would. In this story, they are after a gang of fourteen killers who collectively are worth a lot of money. Lou wants to take them alive because they're worth more that way (spoiler: that rarely happens) and Louisa just wants their deviant selves removed from the planet. To chase this gang takes them to the wintertime freezing conditions of the Dakota territory. On the first round, they kill ten of them. Since the remaining four went two separate directions, Lou and Louisa split up, each with five bodies draped over horses, each following one of the trails. The rest of the story deals with how they track down the remaining four, what they must do (pretty much anything) to capture/kill them, and how many more bodies they collect along the way (spoiler: It's more than the fourteen killers).

Brandvold is a clever writer in a realistic historical genre:

"... pull off my moccasins, my toes are going to come rollin’ out of my socks like dice off a craps table."

"When he was nearly to where Louisa’s pinto and his own horse, the appropriately named Mean and Ugly ..."

"... tied to his head with his spruce-green muffler, covering his ears so they wouldn’t freeze, turn black, and fall off."

",,,he could feel the temperature plummeting like a bucket down an empty well."
Plus, there is no doubt to the reader that Brandvold knows a lot about the Old West:

"... freight the stout-wheeled, high-sided Murphys had once carried, leaving the roadhouse sitting high and dry, so to speak, likely patronized by only the occasional cowpuncher off area ranches, woodcutters, and market hunters, maybe the rare cavalry patrol out of Fort Totten near Devil’s Lake. Now and then a begging Indian—a Sisseton, Wahpeton, or Cut-Head Sioux—too proud or restless to be confined to the agency, probably hoofed it by here on a broom-tailed cayuse with painted rings around its eyes, pausing for a free cup of whiskey and a plate of beans."

The author's voice is quick and clever with just enough humor to keep it a grisly story fun. Be forewarned. There is a lot of blood and gore, fighting and death, with numerous scenes featuring the guns and rifles and shotguns of that era and details of how those weapons won the day. This is highly recommended for those who love the Western genre and don't mind that it isn't sugar-coated for today's more delicate readers.

--review to be published on my blog, WordDreams, April 2019

Blood at Sundown (Lou Prophet, Bounty Hunter) was an enjoying read for me. I am giving it four and a half stars.