When I first received this book to review, the title of course is the first thing that caught my attention. Guns by Phil Bowie. Shaking my head as I saw that, having a very avid hunter for a husband, I was thinking this is the last thing I want to read about after having to hear about them all the time. The next thing I did was read the blurb, and was ready to jump into it with both feet. The blurb was so much like something I enjoy reading: a man with a past that catches up with him, and the revenge for a wrong done to someone he loves. Sounds good already, doesn’t it?

The part about his past catching up with him had me thinking about how just about everyone has something in their past they would love to forget ever happened. But what would you do if that past got someone you dearly love killed? Would you let the police handle it or, like Sam Bass, take revenge yourself?

Sam Bass is a man who is actually in the witness protection program. His picture shows up in the newspaper after saving the lives of an elderly couple. He never realizes other newspapers would take up the story also. Now, years later, there are people being sent after him. Now, he is on the run all over again. After his plane is shot down, he learns what has happened since he tried to leave town to lead the killers away from the ones he cares for. The people sent to kill him kill Valeria Lightfoot, the woman he loved, instead. After weeks of healing from his injuries, Sam has decided that the hunted will become the hunter, and he is hunting for one thing.... revenge.

Revenge is all he can think about, what he plans on getting -- the old Cherokee Indian way. In the time they were together, Valeria taught him a lot about her culture and way of life as a Cherokee Indian. After his grief settles, he makes a visit to the North Carolina Mountains to get her grandfather's help in making this happen.

Guns by Phil Bowie truly has a great plot that kept me interested in finding out what Sam actually did to avenge her death. However, the author drew the story out by adding too many flight aviation terms and weapon details that had me begging to get on with the story. Maybe to a pilot or a hunter like my husband who already knows a lot about planes and guns, this would have been more I interesting. To me it was too much information. Being that this is his first published work of fiction, Mr. Bowie did a good job with the plot.

Reviewed by: Tammy Adams
© May 2006