![Faraday: The Iron Horse by [Reasoner, James]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51QhqVioGsL.jpg)
In “Faraday: The Iron Horse,” prolific author James Reasoner starts his fast-moving mystery-western novel with a bang. A lone rider is pursued across the plains by a band of Sioux warriors. The rider, a man named Duncan, knows that the safety of the Kansas Pacific railhead is too far away, so he heads for the Western Union telegraph line where he can send a message with the telegraph key he’s carrying. He has to warn the Kansas Pacific Railroad that the trouble it’s having with the Indians is being caused by one man—a traitor who works for the railroad itself.
He makes it to a telegraph pole and starts sending, but gets shot down by the Sioux and taken to their village where he endures some nasty torture. In the middle of it a man in a buckskin jacket arrives, who tells the rider he’ll grant him a quick death if he tells what he was doing out here. The man spits blood in his interrogator’s face and one of the Sioux kills him. The man in buckskin angrily tells the Sioux chief he hopes Duncan’s message didn’t get through.
But Duncan’s message did get through, although only partially. He didn’t have time to identify the guilty party. But it’s enough for Amos Rowland, one of the directors of the KP, to hire Matthew Faraday, president of Faraday Security Services, and his young agent, Daniel Britten, to go out to the railhead and investigate. It’s also enough to set up a story that keeps you turning pages as the investigation leads Britten and Faraday into danger from an ever growing number of sources.
Britten goes out alone first, undercover, and posing as a survey draughtsman. Among the lineup of suspects he encounters are, a big, tough, buckskin-jacket-wearing hombre named Callaghan, a former mountain man who works as a scout for the railroad and could easily slip away from the railhead and meet with the Indians. Another suspicious hombre is Terrence Jennings, the railhead foreman, who is engaged to Amos Rowland’s daughter, Deborah. Even Deborah herself seems a little off kilter. An impulsive and headstrong young woman, she rides the same train as Britten out to the railhead and doesn’t think twice about spending the night with him in her father’s custom made sleeping car. She introduces him to Britten as a “friend” she met on the train.
Next in the lineup is Mordecai Vint, a grizzled old peddler who travels around with a pack horse loaded with goods for sale—a man who’s had a lot of contact with the Indians. He has a daughter named Laura, a girl who might be good-looking under the dirt and grime she’s covered with. Reasoner does a good job of introducing these and other characters who become grist for the mystery that Britten must solve. When Britten finds himself in a little over his head, Faraday goes out to the railhead to give him a hand.
Reasoner has a knack for establishing the setting quickly, clearly and authentically, as the scene shifts from Kansas City to the railhead out near the Rockies. In some ways, the book is reminiscent of westerns from the fifties, particularly movies like “Santa Fe,” which had many of the same kind of railhead settings, and featured a great fight between Randolph Scott and Jock Mahoney on a moving flat car. In fact, as I was reading, I couldn’t help picture Scott as Faraday, and Audie Murphy as young Britten. Richard Boone would have been a natural for Callaghan. But that’s just me. Pick your own cast.
“Faraday: The Iron Horse,” is a revised and expanded version of a novel originally published in the eighties as the first in an eight book series written under the house name William Grant. Reasoner says he enjoyed working on it so much, he’s tempted to write another. I wish he would.
Interesting characters, lots of two-fisted action, and a mystery plot all rolled into one, “Faraday: The Iron Horse” is a fast-paced, highly entertaining read. Available in paperback or ebook.
His search for magic was not going well
She was a member of my Security Team in a place called Tulon.”
Another man dressed in a strange outfit came over to them.”Hey you guys,” he said. “Mind if I join you? You all look like you could use some help. Name’s Carson. Frank Carson. Raygun for Hire.”
“Let’s all forget our troubles for a little while and enjoy this green brew,” Slate said. “Happy St. Patrick’s Day!”
Just for the record.