Honeymaker’s Son by Ray Hogan

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 Marshall books. He has a smooth style, although even at a slim 143 pages, Honeymaker's Son feels padded. It’s kind of like a plot for a half hour TV western barely stretched to novella length. Plot points are repeated often as Tom muses at length about his predicament, rehashing what the reader has already perfectly grasped. 

But the action is frequent and well-described, the romance angle never gets in the way, and the end is acceptably suspenseful as an all-out range war erupts. This is not an essential western by any means, but it is enjoyable enough to pass the time without regrets.

Reviewed by Steve Carroll