AUTHOR FAVOURITES: LAST STAND AT BITTER CREEK by THOMAS RIZZO

Thomas Rizzo has completed a three-volume non-fiction series about the American West, TALL TALES FROM THE HIGH PLAINS & BEYOND featuring dozens of stories about Old West lawmen, outlaws, etc. He also blogs about the historical west. See: http://tomrizzo.com/

Thomas tells me he discovered the thrill of creating a special world writing his first western novel LAST STAND AT BITTER CREEK. A God-like experience all of us novelists will understand. BITTER CREEK, loosely based on a true story, follows Grant Bonner, a Union Army Spy during the American Civil War. (I picture a real spy of the period – Allan Pinkerton, head of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, with President Abraham Lincoln.)

Bonner reluctantly agrees to undertake one final mission in the closing days of the war – which proves to be a big mistake. Bonner finds himself wrongly accused of theft and the gruesome murder of union troops. What happens next is a tangled web of intrigue, treachery, and betrayal where the real villain, Colonel Marcus Steele, flees west and begins to set up a frontier empire.

Bonner pursues; in turn he is relentlessly pursued by a former Pinkerton detective, as well as gunmen working for Steele. The result is a series of deadly encounters culminating in a climactic showdown in Bitter Creek, Wyoming.

The spy element made me think of TV’s ‘THE WILD WILD WEST’ which Thomas acknowledges as an early influence.

The idea of ex-Civil War veterans seeking to re-create empires of one kind or another out west features in movies from ‘HORIZONS WEST’ to ‘RIO CONCHOS.’ (It even turns up on TV, e.g. The HIGH CHAPARRAL episode ‘The Filibusteros.’)

Rio Conchos (1964)

Reviews for LAST STAND AT BITTER CREEK:  

‘A classic Western, with a twist… The author did a great job with plot and subplot development, character emotions, and allowing us to feel as though we were a part of his wonderfully descriptive scenes.’

‘Author Rizzo has a firm grasp of all the major elements that make a good novel: strong theme, original premise, clever plot, and fleshed out characters. A… departure from the traditional formulaic western into a story that is far more offbeat.’

‘Haunting Civil War epic excites and intrigues.’

‘I knew without a doubt that given Tom Rizzo’s superb research and journalistic skills, that any book of fiction he wrote would be excellent indeed… one of the outstanding writers of Western Historical Fiction.’

'A fascinating plot.'

'Excellent story... great character development, brilliantly written... would make a wonderful series.'

https://www.amazon.com/Last-Stand-at-Bitter-Creek/dp/0984797793