Scream of Eagles

March 4, 1996
Twelve years--and any sense of realism--have gone up in smoke since Jamie MacCallister fought for the Confederacy in Talons of Eagles (1995). In this fourth volume of Johnstone's Eagles series, Jamie, patriarch of the hugely prolific clan that runs Valley, Colo., acts as little more than a Dirty Harry in buckskins, as likely to slaughter historical fact as he is to off his fellow humans. After his beloved wife is murdered by the Miles Nelson gang of cutthroats and robbers, Jamie vows to track down and kill every one of the cowardly outlaws. At 62, the frontiersman is as tough as a boiled owl, spry and still handy with his pistols, rifle and shotgun.Wasting no time, he wipes out the gang and, through a maze of poorly defined subplots, also pumps lead into bounty hunters, feuding families, crooked lawmen, hired assassins and several hapless smart alecks. Jamie even finds time to fight the Sioux with General Custer, miraculously surviving the Last Stand. This is a preposterous story, with little historical accuracy or value, featuring a shallow caricature of a western hero. Readers may note that Jamie never confronts Miles Nelson himself, no doubt saving the outlaw for a further bloodbath--though one wonders if it could possibly be as mindless as this.

March 1, 1996
The fourth novel in the Jamie MacCallister saga finds the Civil War veteran and hero of the Alamo searching for the killers of Kate, his wife of 45 years. He's tracking the Nelson gang, 55 strong, and the trail will take him from one edge of the country to the other. MacCallister is consumed by revenge and made fearless by the concept that his death will just hasten his reunion with Kate. Though MacCallister has been an intriguing and violent protagonist in the first three novels in the series, this time he is bereft of the humor and humanity that made him interesting. Here he's a gray-haired killing machine. Period. The action scenes are well written--as always--and there are actual historical figures scattered about, but ultimately this is the literary western equivalent of the "Die Hard" films. Still, the series has an established audience, ensuring that it will be requested by western readers in most public libraries. ((Reviewed March 1, 1996))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1996, American Library Association.)