The Sorrow Hand - Dwight Holing

For Vietnam veteran turned wildlife ranger Nick Drake, the war at home proves just as deadly. A contemporary western thriller.
Harney County, Oregon, 1968: Nick Drake has a chest full of medals and enough demons to fill a duffle bag. He's been trained to kill, but never retrained to rejoin society. Drake flees to the lonesome high desert in search of redemption and takes a job patrolling wildlife refuges where the only conflicts are keeping out stray cows and ticketing poachers. But then he stumbles across a girl's body ritually placed in a gully. Her murder is only the beginning, and Drake must face humanity's heart of darkness once again if he's to stop a killer from turning even more gullies into graves.

What readers are saying:
★★★★★ Fits right alongside Craig Johnson, C.J. Box, and Nevada Barr.
★★★★★ I'm a huge fan of contemporary westerns married with a mystery. This nails it.
★★★★★ Nick Drake is wonderfully complex. His backstory in Vietnam is beautifully (and horrifically) described.
★★★★★ The supporting characters feel so real. The old lawman, Deputy Pudge Warbler, is as flinty and resolute as his pitiless territory.
★★★★★ I absolutely loved the Native American character, her language and myths.
★★★★★ Got it on Friday and finished it on Saturday. An amazing read.
★★★★★ Smart, thrilling, and action-packed.
★★★★★ The prose crackles like the high desert setting.
★★★★★ The descriptions of the natural surroundings put me right there. I could touch, smell, and hear it.