STEVE CARROLL WRITES

Cage Five is Going to   Break  (1970) by E. Richard Johnson The   most interesting thing about the short novel  Cage Five is Going to Break  is that its author, E. Richard Johnson,   wrote it while serving a 40- year prison sentence for his part in a robbery that   resulted in murder. He wrote nearly every word of his 11 published crime novels   from behind   bars.  Our main character here is Stacy Tate, a convicted bank   robber incarcerated in Murphy Prison. Stacy is masterminding a breakout that   involves several other inmates from his cell block along with his hooker   girlfriend, Mae, working on the outside. She has access to the money   from the   bank job that landed Stacy in prison and is using it and her body to influence   a susceptible prison guard.  Almost the entire book is set-up   as the reader is   kept in the dark about exactly how this break will occur. We are introduced to   an idealistic Custody & Treatment Officer, the cruel   and sadistic captain   of the gua

Honeymaker’s Son   (1975) by Ray Hogan Universally feared yet despised land baron Burl Honeymaker has been bushwhacked, shot in the back by an unknown assassin. Now it’s up to his young estranged son, Tom, to find the killer even as he assumes responsibility of the family ranch and with it, inherits an escalating land war with three other powerful landowners who all want his vast acreage. The question for Tom to answer is, which one of them is willing to kill to get it?  Overall Honeymaker's Son is a pretty straightforward western. There’s plenty of gunplay and dastardly potential villains with their personal armies, all ready and willing to take the Honeymaker property by force. Complicating things is an unexpected romance that develops between Tom and the daughter of one of the scheming landowners.  Ray Hogan wrote well over 100 books in his career, mostly standalone westerns, though he did pen a couple of western series, including the Shawn Starbuck adventures and The Doomsday