Peter Grant’s latest in his Ames Archives series, Gold on the Hoof, is the best of his fiction that I’ve read.  Go, read it now and see for yourself.

OK, that’s the short review.  Now for the details:

The Comanche and Kiowa are painting for war in the Texas Panhandle. The US Army is preparing to stop them – but it needs horses to do so. Lots of horses. Walt Ames knows where to find them, and breeding stock for his horse ranch, too. All he has to do is ride down to Mexico, buy them, and bring them back safely. That’s easier said than done.

He and his men will have to cover more than two thousand brutally hard miles, and deal with Indian raiders, Comanchero renegades, bandidos, and would-be horse thieves… not to mention a certain Irish-Mexican redheaded beauty who can make him forget everything else in the emerald glow of her eyes. Walt’s going to need every ounce of his grit and determination, plenty of firepower, and a lot of luck if he’s to convert the gold in his pockets to gold on the hoof.

Gold on the Hoof occurs a few years after Rocky Mountain Retribution.  Ames is looking to expand his business into providing horses for the Army, so he puts together a plan to acquire them in Mexico.  He and a band of good men head south to do business and end up crossing the path of several bad men.  Grant gives the business end of this story a light touch, but lays it on thick with the action and characters.  I read the entire thing in one gulp.

Grant has a special knack for getting into the heads of his characters and exploring the world through their eyes, and this is on prominent display in Gold on the Hoof.  The character of Ames is especially well fleshed out, and the new characters Grant introduces quickly become three dimensional and interesting.

The author did a good job of pacing the story, and the research to paint the people and places we encounter is top notch.  Like I said, I read it all in one stretch, so don’t be surprised if you find you can’t put Gold on the Hoof down.