In "Outrage at Blanco" we are introduced to Ellie Tate, a feminine but fierce woman of 1880. After she is raped and her husband murdered, Ellie follows the trail, meets some interesting people, and brings the story to a just ending. The book is written in the believable, no-nonsense style of classic westerns.

Here, however, we have a yakkety yak chatty book that drove me crazy. I could not finish.

I also noticed here, for the first time, that the covers of these two book feature aviator sunglasses on 1880s characters. WTF?

I received a review copy of "Texas Vigilante" by Bill Crider (Brash) directly from the publisher. It was first published in 1999 by Dell. ( )

Texas Vigilante: An Ellie Taine Thriller by Bill Crider is the sequel to Outrage at Blanco. I had not read the previous novel but this one can stand alone. I gave it five stars even though I don't read a lot of westerns.

I was surprised by the cover photo with a woman wearing modern sunglasses since this book was set in the 1880's.

Ellie Taine had been left for dead after the men raped her & killed her husband. She was relentless in hunting them down. She then put her guns away to run a ranch.

A ruthless killer, Angel Ware, escaped from a prison wagon on the way to Huntsville, Texas. He tracked his sister Sue to Ellie's ranch & attacked & took Sue's child with them. Ellie couldn't stand for waiting for the posse so she mounted up & headed after them.

Sue went with her & questioned whether they should have waited for the Marshall. Here is a quote that tells a lot about the type of woman Ellie is: "If you got hurt, what did it matter, as long as you were doing the right thing? And she knew they were doing the right thing."

One of the escaped convicts, Jephson, questioned whether he was doing the right thing. "He even wished, briefly, that he'd done things differently, that he'd done something to help Hob Bowman. But there was nothing he could have done. He'd been chained to Angel then, & he was chained to him now. The chains were different, & you couldn't even see them, but they were there just the same."

One of the members of the posse said "'But it's mighty wet out there.' The other replied: 'Better to be a little wet than a whole lot dead.'"

In the encounter with Ellie, "Angel was taken completely by surprise. He'd never met up with a woman like this one before, a woman who'd just start shooting at you without a word of warning. It was just the kind of thing he would have done." He would have too, but didn't think it was right that a woman would.

I received a free kindle copy from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review but that did not influence my opinion of this fast moving book. ( )

Texas Vigilante is Bill Crider’s sequel to his rousing western novel Outrage at Blanco. What makes both of the novels unusual is not that they feature a fearless gunfighter or villains so nasty that they would make a Jack Palance movie character turn and run for his life. No, what makes Outrage at Blanco and Texas Vigilante special is that the gunfighter they feature is a woman – a woman who has had all she can take and who is now willing to take the law into her own hands when and as necessary. Ellie Traine has a gun and she is not afraid to use it.

Ellie is working hard to make a go of the small ranch she inherited at the close of Outrage at Blanco. Reconciled to widowhood, she has carved out a new life for herself in the little Texas town in which her husband was so brutally murdered just months earlier. With the help of hired hands, including a young couple and their little girl, the ranch, while not exactly thriving, is doing well enough to provide Ellie with both a home and a purpose in life.

But, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished. Ellie is about to learn that the young couple working for her knocked on her door for a good reason. Lane Tolbert is desperately trying to hide his family from his brother-in-law, and Ellie’s little ranch in the middle of nowhere seems like as good a place as any to do that. His wife’s brother is a violent prison inmate who believes that his sister turned him in to authorities. He has vowed revenge, and because Lane knows very well that the man is capable of anything, he fears that his brother-in-law will slaughter them all.

And now, in a bloodbath that claims the lives of several prison guards, Angel has escaped and he’s looking for Lane, Sue, and especially for their little girl. He has big plans for the family and he knows exactly how to hurt them the most. Once again, the only thing standing between pure evilness and those incapable of taking care of themselves alone is a woman called Ellie. And Ellie Traine is not going to back down – now or ever again.

To say only that Texas Vigilante is a violent, action packed western novel would not do it credit because it is much more than that. Bill Crider has created a memorable character in Ellie Traine, and it’s kind of a shame that there is not a third Ellie Traine western. Read this one, western fans, because Ellie Traine is a hoot. ( )

I received this ebook free from the publisher through NetGalley.com. I give it 4 and 1/2 stars(rounded up to 5). It is a crisp western set in 1880s Texas. It was an easy read--2 days for me. Ellie Taine is a widow running a ranch when a group of escaped convicts kidnapped the daughter of her foreman. She goes after them with the girl's mother, because the father was shot during the kidnapping. This book is a sequel to a previous book by Crider, Outrage at Blanco, which is now on my to be read list of books.
The writing reminds me of westerns written by Elmore Leonard. I learned about this author from my GR friend Col. Thanks Col! ( )

Originally published in 1999 by Dell Books, Texas Vigilante is a sequel to Outrage in Blanco. Some of the events of the first book are mentioned in Texas Vigilante and, by necessity, in this review so you have been warned.

It has been a few months since Ella Taine took over Jonathan Crossland’s ranch after he died. These past months have not been easy. Ranching in Texas is difficult things were such that she had to go into debt to a bank in San Antonio. She didn’t like doing it, but she had and so far things are holding together. She has good help and that includes Lane Tolbert. She recently hired him as he was desperately in need of a job to support his wife, Sue, and his very young daughter. Ellie cares about Lane and his wife a lot, but she absolutely adores Lauire. That smart and beautiful little girl is the daughter Ellie never had and her presence is almost like she is her own child. One of the real pleasures is sitting down and reading with her.

Mr. Crossland had an office with a small library of books by authors such as Irving, Cooper, Melville, Hawthorne, Shakespeare, and others. Laurie is not quite ready for Shakespeare, but the other books she can handle. Their latest read features a skinny school teacher by the name of Ichabod Crane and a certain headless horseman. Neither Ellie, Laurie, or the others on the ranch have any idea that a real life horror is about to be visited upon them thanks to a prison escape and a certain prisoner bent on revenge.

Following the very good Outrage at Blanco isn’t easy, but Bill Crider does it masterfully in Texas Vigilante. Like in the preceding book, the theme of revenge is again a major part of this western as are the choices folks make as they move through life. Ellie is, by necessity, not as much a part of everything as in the first book, but she makes herself well known in a novel that cracks with a gunshot every few pages. A mighty good western, Texas Vigilante is a good one and quite the sequel to “Outrage at Blanco.

Texas Vigilante (Ellie Taine Book Two)
Bill Crider
http://billcrider.blogspot.com/
Brash Books
http://mysterythrillerbooks.com/
September 2014
ASIN: B00KAJX6BQ
E-Book (also available in paperback)
304 Pages
$2.99

Using funds in my Amazon Associate account I picked this up to read and review awhile back.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2014 ( )