STEVE KELTON and JOHN BRADSHAW
Elmer Kelton’s The Familiar Stranger: A Hewey Calloway Adventure
Forge Books/Tor Publishing Group
Hardcover, 192 pages, $28.99
us.macmillan.com/torpublishinggroup/

Steve Kelton began the continuing story his father, Elmer Kelton, created featuring Hewey Calloway as the good ole boy character every reader loved, and it made sense for Steve to carry on the tradition. Sadly, he passed away before the novel finished, but John Bradshaw has brought the story to a rousing end.

Hewey, having delivered a herd of horses up toward Durango, Colorado, should’ve been on his way home to west Texas. Instead, he took a notion to head north, just to see the country. This brings him into contact with a young man suffering from smallpox, whom he helps. Catching the disease himself, the young man then saves his life. When a Pinkerton detective and a banker arrive on the scene saying Bob is a bank robber, things don’t add up to Hewey. You can bet dicey situations follow.

The dialogue is perfect, the action riveting, the story as a whole completely satisfying. This is one you won’t want to miss.
-Carol Crigger