Lone Creek

by: Neil McMahon

Published by: Harper Collins

Reviewed by Jeff Foster

Hugh Davoren is what in most people eyes would seem to be your average guy. He’s a day laborer and carpenter for a local Helena, Montana construction firm, currently working on renovatiing an old ranch homestead south of the city.

One afternoon, while driving a load of scrap material to the ranche’s dump, he has a chance encounter with the new ranch owner’s wife. It’s cordial, but out of character. He’s never actually met her and feels she has gone out of her way to avoid him. Her resemblance to a girl he once knew brings back haunting memories of a summer he spent working the same ranch–and the two shadowy deaths that took place there long ago.

At the dumpsite, while dumping the material from his truck, he notices a horse hoof protruding from a pile of garbage. Upon investigating further, he finds not one but two horses that have been murdered, grossly mutilated and surreptitiously hidden. Davoren, a native Montanan and former investigative columnist for a California newspaper with a love for horses, decides to poke around the ranch to see if he can figure out what caused the questionable deaths of the two equines.

Before he asks his first questions, he is confronted by the ranch foreman and held at gunpoint by drug addict youngest son of the ranch’s former owner Kirk Pettyjohn. Then the ranch’s new owner, a sly Easterner, Wesley Balcomb comes to interrogate him.

From the moment Balcomb arrives, Davoren’s life is thrown into a tailspin from which he may not recover. He is arrested on trumped-up charges, jailed, freed, and terrorized by Balcomb’s henchman to the breaking point. With the help of Madbird, a Native American Blackfoot, Davoren evades Balcomb’s ever-tightening net and unravels the mystery around the dead horses.

The Big Sky country of Montana is so perfect for Lone Creek that you find yourself visualizing every descriptive scene the McMahon writes. This is a terrific story, full of likable characters, vivid personalities, and just enough intrigue to keep those pages turning.

Armchair Interviews says: Going out West for a summer excursion? Take this one with, you will not be sorry.