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Call of the Wilde: An H.H. Lomax Western Paperback – March 17, 2023
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Wild west hijinks continue in the eighth installment of the hysterical and historical adventures of an unlikely hero.
H.H. Lomax once again finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time when, wrongfully accused of robbing a bank, he’s arrested and jailed in a town vying for a stop on the approaching Texas & Pacific Railroad.
When local officials can’t afford to pay for a trial, a harebrained scheme is concocted to get rid of Lomax without spending a red cent. But Lomax avoids the hairy situation, pulling off an escape with the aid of an unlikely accomplice and exacting a bit of revenge in the process.
His wandering spirit—and neck—intact, Lomax lands among the Mormons in Salt Lake City, where he encounters a long-lost relative in need of assistance and makes the acquaintance of none other than Irish poet and aesthete Oscar Wilde. And from there, it’s all downhill, folks!
Jumping from one bad situation to another in non-stop hilarious action, H.H. Lomax’s adventures will tickle your funny bone with genuine humor while satisfying your craving for western action adventure.
- Print length352 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateMarch 17, 2023
- Dimensions5 x 0.88 x 8 inches
- ISBN-101639776109
- ISBN-13978-1639776108
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Product details
- Publisher : Wolfpack Publishing (March 17, 2023)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1639776109
- ISBN-13 : 978-1639776108
- Item Weight : 11.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 5 x 0.88 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #4,034,604 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #23,120 in Fiction Satire
- #28,797 in Humorous Fiction
- #34,503 in Westerns (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Preston Lewis is the Spur Award-winning author of more than 40 western, juvenile and historical novels on the Old West as well as numerous articles, short stories and book reviews on the American frontier.
Lewis created the well-received "Memoirs of H.H. Lomax," a comic western series now published by Wolfpack Publishing. "Outlaw West of the Pecos," the seventh book in the series, was released in 2022. "Bluster's Last Stand," the fourth book in the series, was published in 2017 and earned the Will Rogers Gold Medallion Award for western humor. The fifth and sixth books in the series, "First Herd to Abilene" and "North to Alaska" were published in the spring of 2020, receiving Will Rogers Gold and Silver Medallions respectively. Previous books in the series in order of publication were "The Demise of Billy the Kid," "The Redemption of Jesse James" and "Mix-Up at the O.K. Corral." The latter two were both Spur Finalists from Western Writers of America.
"Rio Ruidoso," the first book in his Three Rivers Trilogy on the Lincoln County War, was published by Five Star in February 2020. "Rio Bonito," the second book in the trilogy, appeared in August 2021. "Rio Hondo," the final book in the trilogy, was published in May of 2022.
Lewis's western "Blood of Texas," originally written under his Will Camp pseudonym, received WWA's Spur Award for best western novel. Lewis's 2016 western "The Fleecing of Fort Griffin," another comic novel, received the Elmer Kelton Award for best creative work on West Texas from the West Texas Historical Association. It was Lewis's third Kelton award.
His True West article on the battle of Yellowhouse Canyon also won a Spur Award. His book publishers have included Bantam, HarperCollins, Pinnacle, Eakin Press, Wild Horse Press and Wolfpack Publishing. His short works have appeared in publications as varied as Louis L'Amour Western Magazine, True West, Persimmon Hill and Dallas Morning News.
Eakin Press published his three young adult novels on animals from frontier Texas: "They Call Me Old Blue," "Blanca is My Name" and "Just Call Me Uncle Sam."
When he is not writing or researching, Lewis enjoys traveling and photographing historic sites of the Old West and the Civil War.
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Here we find H. H. Lomax in a variety of precarious situations. First, he’s arrested as a bank robber in Buffalo Gap, Texas. The fine, upstanding lawmen there aim to see H. H. hang for cleaning out their bank (and worse, possibly depriving them of being included on the Texas & Pacific railroad line). Never mind that he didn’t do it. These lawmen aren’t about to let the truth get in the way of a good hanging. Of Texas, Lomax says, “The only thing I had going for me was that if I died in Texas, Saint Peter’d let me pass the Pearly Gates since I’d already been to hell.”
Through the assistance of one Mandy Mae Minter, daughter of the Buffalo Gap sheriff, Lomax makes his getaway (with an ironic twist, which I won’t share – go read the book to find out. It made me snort-laugh when I read it). He reunites with his sister Melissa, who’s the star of a traveling theater troupe, when he head to Mormon territory thinking he might find himself a wife or five and settle down. For a brief moment, it looks like Lomax may have found his calling as an actor. But when the troupe’s performance gets bumped due to an upcoming performance by the one and only Oscar Wilde, Lomax sets out intent to make Wilde’s promoters pay for the money they’ve cost his family. He has no idea he’ll be playing the role of his life. (I didn’t say he’d like it; I said it would be the role of his life.)
Lomax finds himself pressed into service as Oscar Wilde’s bodyguard after the promoters agree to pay him what he’s asking. They’ll pay, sure, but they want to recoup their funds (because the promoters are all about money, don’tcha know). And where do they end up going but Leadville, Colorado. The one place Lomax does NOT want to go, because he’s wanted there for a murder he has no memory of committing.
Shenanigans ensue.
Y’all, this book had me laughing out loud. It’s Terry Pratchett funny, only set in our very own Wild West rather than a fantasy world. It kind of called to mind Carrying Albert Home by Homer Hickam, “the somewhat true story of a man, his wife, and her alligator,” in that maybe some of it is true, maybe some of it isn’t. Let the reader decide.
Preston Lewis writes characters mild and wild and absolutely engaging. Lomax is a rough-hewn, no-nonsense kind of guy, although he can sure talk a line of bull when it’s to save his own skin. The lawmen in Buffalo Gap were all about as dumb as stumps, and Mandy Mae, the sheriff’s daughter, was an absolute treasure. I hope we see more of her in future Lomax stories, and I hope she never listens when the world tries to tell her she’s just a girl!
And let me say, Oscar Wilde is about as much the opposite of Lomax as anyone could possibly be. Lewis’ descriptions of Lomax impersonating Wilde had me howling. I don’t know much about Wilde myself, but if he was anywhere near how Lewis depicted him, I expect Lomax’s speeches as the ersatz Wilde (inferior as far as Wilde himself was concerned, anyway) were far more enjoyable!
Lewis has some fantastic turns of phrase here. Let me share a handful of my favorites:
“Tindle looked at me like I’d put gunpowder in his mother’s snuff.”
“…as he was odder than a three-headed duck and ten times as looney as your average politician making a stump speech.”
“I returned to the parlor as Wilde emerged from his quarters, his outfit looking like a rainbow had collided with a freight train.”
And I nearly choked on this one, when Lomax was acting as Wilde’s stand-in:
“Then you are Bunthorne, the fool of Patience?” shouted another skeptical man.
I proudly raised my chin and nodded. “I ameth but I prefereth to calleth myself Butt-thorn as I ameth a pain in the ass-thete.”
I love the story. I love the characters. I love the research Lewis has clearly put into his work. Not only does he give us a rip-snortin’ good story, he puts it in a realistic setting. Now, I don’t know about Mormon women being as ugly as Wilde claimed they were, but Lewis gives apt descriptions of small-town political machinations and the rough and tumble life of a thriving mining town.
If you want a rootin’, tootin’ good story that’s a lot of fun to read, with characters you can cheer for and throw (figurative) rotten tomatoes at, I highly recommend H. H. Lomax. Start at the beginning to get the full effect of Lomax’s saga. Read ’em and weep, because you’ll laugh so hard, you’ve got tears rolling down your face.
This story is no exception to that rule. Lomax gets out of Jail in Texas, escapes some bullets in Deadwood, and manages to escape a few other minor tough spots, accomplishing that with a mix of his wit, ingenuity, and courage.
One of the things I especially liked in this installment of the ongoing saga, was Lomax connecting with his sister, Lissa, in Utah and him getting to know her family and the children. This showed a tender side of Lomax that wasn’t always seem in previous books previous stories. Lissa allowed Lomax to tell some of his tall tales, or were they really true?, to the children as long as he added a moral to the story, which he did without complaining. This interaction with the members of the troupe, and all the children was a real special part of the story for me, and I was almost as sad as the children were to see him leave.
But adventures awaited!
Primarily, getting some money for the traveling actors who were losing because of the untimely arrival of Oscar Wilde to the theatre and bumping their opening for another week. The troupe manager had spend a few hundred dollars on advertising and posters, which were no good now. Money the traveling actors could ill afford to lose, so Lomax was having no part of that.
Which proves that while H.H. Lomax can face off with bandits and other ne’er-do-wells, a genuine good man lurks under the bravado.
The story is so funny in places it brings a chuckle, and the time our hero spends with Oscar Wilde has some of the greatest lines because Lomax doesn’t understand some of the ten-dollar words that Wilde uses. For instance, while Wilde is talking to the president of the Mormons, John Taylor, during a tour of Salt Lake City, Wilde rails against the Philistines being against art and beauty. Lomax thinks, “I decided I would like to meet this Phyllis Steen someday if she was such a thorn in his behind.”
Like Preston’s other books in the series, The Outlaw West of the Pecos, that I reviewed here in 2022, this novel is packed with enough fun to keep you happily reading until the end, and eager to see the next one in the series. The historical details and accuracy add another layer of enjoyment to the read that I highly recommend to folks who like a good Western starring a wonderful protagonist and laces with lots of humor.