What some reviewers have to say about Van Holt’s writing:
Step aside Louis L'Amour, another great Western writer is here… –Heather
I had a feeling that Van Holt…might actually be the successor to Zane Gray, a master Western storysmith, whose novels set the style of a generation. –Stern0
Van Holt is King of the Spaghetti Western… –Rarebird1
THE MAN CALLED BOWDRY
Not much is known for certain about the man called Bowdry. The bare facts are as follows. Sometime around 1880 he rode into Gray Buttes, Nevada–a long forgotten town–stayed for a time at the Pollard shack out in the hills and, after the old man was killed, made relentless war on the neighboring 3-Bar outfit which was run by the Wadley clan, known thieves and rustlers. Then he disappeared, to be seen no more, nor was he ever heard of again.
He was the only one who knew how so many men ended up dead in the boulder-strewn hills around the old Pollard shack, and he never told anyone, unless it was the wild and beautiful redheaded woman named Lucy Reardon.
There were those who doubted if his real name was Bowdry. Some even suspected that he was really old man Pollard’s long-lost son and that his name was Will Pollard, a mysterious gunfighter who roamed the early West. But before the stranger appeared it had never occurred to anyone that old man Pollard might have a son, and most would have laughed at the notion that he was related in any way to the legendary gunfighter who happened to have the same last name.
No one knew very much about the old man. No one even knew what his first name was. The people of Gray Buttes just called him old man Pollard or old Pollard, and smiled in a certain condescending way when they mentioned him.
Warning: Reading a Van Holt western may make you want to get on a horse and hunt some bad guys down in the Old West. Of course, the easiest and most enjoyable way to do it is vicariously–by reading another Van Holt western.
Van Holt writes westerns the way they were meant to be written.
