The Outlawed — Ray Hogan

The Rimrocker

It was more than Shawn Starbuck had reckoned for. Unceasingly he had searched for his brother -- a legacy at stake for them both -- asking endless questions on numberless trails, in sun-baked towns, at desolate huts and sprawling ranches . . . and now it seemed, at long last, his searching would end.
Only it wasn't that simple. Suddenly there were three desperate men on the scene -- cutthroats and renegades -- each staunchly determined to see Starbuck dead. If they couldn't do the job, the richest man in the territory would hire gunslingers who could.
Starbuck had a choice. He could turn tail, clear out, and save his hide. But he wasn't the kind of man who dodged trouble -- no matter what the odds.

The Outlawed

Starbuck had ridden endless miles over the trackless southwest on an unending quest for his brother. Now he was almost on the heels of the man who might be Ben. But deep in the wilds of Arizona, Starbuck stopped to aid a stranger against savage Apaches, a man on a mysterious mission of his own, a man who led Starbuck into a web of vengeance and bloody violence …


Ray Hogan is an author who has inspired a loyal following ever since he published his first Western novel Ex-marshal in 1956. Hogan was born in Willow Springs, Missouri, where his father was town marshal. At five the Hogan family moved to Albuquerque where Ray Hogan lived in the foothills of the Sandia and Manzano mountains. His father was on the Albuquerque police force and, in later years, owned the Overland Hotel. It was while listening to his father and other old-timers tell tales from the past that Ray was inspired to recast these tales in fiction. From the beginning he did exhaustive research into the history and the people of the Old West and the walls of his study were lined with various firearms, spurs, pictures, books, and memorabilia, about all of which he could talk in dramatic detail. Among his most popular works are the series of books about Shawn Starbuck, a searcher in a quest for a lost brother, who has a clear sense of right and wrong and who is willing to stand up and be counted when it is a question of fairness or justice. His other major series is about lawman John Rye, whose reputation has earned him the sobriquet The Doomsday Marshal. ‘I've attempted to capture the courage and bravery of those men and women that lived out west and the dangers and problems they had to overcome,” Hogan once remarked. If his lawmen protagonists seem sometimes larger than life, it is because they are men of integrity, heroes who through grit, character and common sense are able to overcome the obstacles they encounter despite often overwhelming odds. This same grit of character can also be found in Hogan's heroines and, in The Vengeance of Fortuna West, Hogan wrote a gripping and totally believable account of a woman who takes up the badge and tracks the men who killed her lawman husband by ambush. No less intriguing in her way is Nellie Dupray, convicted of rustling in The Glory Trail. Above all, what is most impressive about Hogan's Western novels is the consistent quality with which each is crafted, the compelling depth of his characters, and his ability to juxtapose the complexities of human conflict into narratives always as intensely interesting as they are emotionally involving.