Reviewed by Annika
TITLE: Hell and Gone
AUTHOR: Tal Bauer
PUBLISHER: Self-Published
RELEASE DATE: June 24, 2019
LENGTH: 197 pages
BLURB:
One hanged man.
Two vanished cowboys.
Three hundred missing cattle.
The Crazy Mountains are devouring everything they see.
Everett Dawson, Montana’s newest Stock Detective, has been sent from Helena down to the Crazy Mountains. Cattle are going missing in the Crazies and Everett is charged with finding these modern-day rustlers and bringing them in.
When he arrives, he finds a hanged cowboy and a heap of questions. Was it suicide or was it murder? Why are cowboys fleeing the Crazies? Far from a simple investigation, Everett’s case plunges deep into the mountains’ dark past.
Lawrence Jackson, the bad boy who runs the Lazy Twenty Two, was the last man to see the dead cowboy alive. There’s a whole forest fire of smoke swirling around Lawrence, and where there’s smoke, there’s flame… and maybe even murder.
But Everett is drawn to Lawrence, and if he takes the risk Lawrence offers, will Everett find what he craves, or will the Crazies claim their next victim?
REVIEW:
It all started with a cowboy with a noose around his neck…
Hell and Gone takes place over just a few days. They are intense days, dangerous days filled with dead bodies, missing cowboys and stolen cattle. It’s set in the Crazy Mountains where everyone knows everything about everybody and outsiders are not welcome. It’s the place Lawrence Jackson calls home, it’s in his bones and part of who he is. But something or someone is threatening that, but getting the sheriff to investigate proves to be impossible. That is until he literally drops a dead body on his desk. Subtle is not something used to describe Law. He’s hot-headed, hot tempered and often violent and angry. But he’s also hard-working and fiercely loyal. And to be a bit clichéd, he’s looking for someone to love and someone that loves him. He’s been through hell and back, and recognises the signs in the detective sent to solve the crimes.
Everett Dawson is a stock detective from Helena, sent to investigate what’s going on in the Crazies. He didn’t count on the conspiracies, feuds and animosity that he found in town. And what looked like a simple suicide turned out to be anything but. For years he’s been going through the motions, not caring or feeling, barely existing. But when he meets Law something in him sparks to life. But can he trust that he’s not behind the crimes?
The first chapter drew me in and had me invested in Carson and wonder why this cowboy ended up on the back of a horse with a noose around his neck. It made me wonder who Law was, that apparently was the cause of the things that led up to Carson’s fate. (Which in retrospect should have been obvious had I just read the blurb before starting to read.) I had questions and I wanted to know more.
The second chapter however was the complete opposite for me. Even though it was only a page long it took me forever to read it, the writing felt off and clunky and more than once I had to go back and re-read sentences to make sense of them. If the first chapter hooked me, the second one made me wonder what the hell I had gotten myself into.
I would say that this book needs editing in a bad way. Too many comas (this coming from the queen of too many comas), words missing or words added where they shouldn’t, grammatical errors and so on. Now I’m not usually a picky reader when it comes to editing or grammar, but I need the story and the words to flow. I don’t want to get stuck on sentences that don’t make sense. I want to travel across the world and enjoy the story. Bauer has set a goal for himself to release one book a month this year, but I’m questioning that. I was questioning it when I first read it, and even more so after reading Hell and Gone. I would much prefer to have fewer well-written books that have that magical feeling that I’ve come to associate with Bauer, rather than many so, so books.
Don’t get me wrong, the overall story is good and has great and interesting characters – but it’s not up to par with his past works, there’s no comparison. The mystery was I’d say average and pretty straightforward, the romance wasn’t really there and the little there was felt rushed. I wanted more. Especially since I’ve come to expect more from Bauer’s writing – and maybe that’s on me for putting him on that pedestal of epic writing and stories that really engage and are so well researched and intricate that your mind is blown. No one is perfect and we are all human, so expecting Bauer to be something more is unfair to him.
What he really did pull off was the sense of place. He took you to the Crazies and the vast country. He made you smell the fresh air, taste the dust and dirt. It was vivid, and beautiful. So while I might not visit this place anytime soon, I did enjoy the thrilling time I spent up in the mountains.
RATING: 
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