Johnny Colt

Blood on the Wire

Johnny Colt #1

by

James Reasoner 

The open range is dying, strangled by fences, greed, and men willing to slaughter homesteaders for what was never theirs. Johnny Colt rides into the middle of that bloody battleground carrying a reputation he didn’t ask for—and a gun he knows how to use. He’s fast, deadly, and determined to live by his own rules, but fate has other plans for him.

When rustlers, hired guns, and merciless land barons take over land and cattle, Johnny finds himself pulled into a brutal struggle as sharp as the barbed wire cutting across the plains. Every fence post hammered into the ground leaves another body in the dust. And the powers behind it believe killing and intimidation will clear the way for their empire.

Problem is, they’ve underestimated Johnny Colt.

As the killing escalates and alliances fracture, Colt is forced to choose between riding away clean or standing his ground against enemies who won’t stop until the range is flowing with the blood of innocents. With towns caught in the crossfire and lives at stake, Johnny discovers that survival in the new West demands more than speed—it demands an immunity to fear and terror. And Johnny Colt can deliver both to his enemies.

Hard-hitting, fast-paced, and steeped in classic Western grit, Blood on the Wire launches a hard-driving series about a man forged by violence and driven by his own unrelenting code of honor.

The story opens with Johnny Colt and his friends riding out to cut the wire Vince Atkinson’s Flying A hands have strung across open range. Instead of a simple night job, they ride straight into an ambush. Gun‑thunder rips the dark wide open, Johnny is wounded, and suddenly he’s running for his life.

Just when it seems he’s finished, salvation comes out of the shadows in the form of his uncle—Captain Esau Parker, known to his men as Captain Brimstone for the fire and brimstone he can sling from a Bible. Before Johnny can catch his breath, he’s sworn in as a Texas Ranger and sent straight back into the rattler’s nest. His mission: learn who murdered his friends and, if the trail leads that way, haul Verne Atkinson in to face the law.

What Johnny doesn’t expect is Atkinson’s sharp‑tempered daughter, or the foreman, Blake Trask, a man with secrets of his own.

Something’s rotten on the Flying A, and Johnny Colt will need every ounce of grit and gun‑sense he’s got if he aims to stay alive.

James Reasoner delivers a terrific opening chapter to the Johnny Colt series. It has the flavor of the classic westerns of the ’50s and ’60s—very much in the spirit of Bradford Scott’s Walt Slade—backed by a strong cast of characters.

I enjoyed every page, and by the end I was already eager for the next installment. Hopefully it’s the first of many. The story is action‑packed, fast‑moving, and Reasoner’s prose goes down easy—like slipping into a well‑worn shirt and settling in by a warm fire.

Left me wanting more. 5/5.