It’s a rare feat for any work of Art to manage to be two things at once. DEAD INDIAN WARS by Clark Casey, just like its predecessor, DAWN IN DAMNATION, succeeds both as a “straight” story and as a parody, and yes, it does so at the same time. A common problem with satire, in my opinion, and even moreso with really good satire, is that I seldom care about the characters. The attraction is the cleverness of the satirizing, the delivery; characterization typically falls short. Casey’s books avoid this pitfall. I do like (or hate, if that’s what is appropriate) the characters, as they are well fleshed-out and nuanced, and I do care what happens to them. Like I said, the book works as parody and it works straight.
DEAD INDIAN WARS follows the adventures of a sheriff in an Old West town called Damnation. Only the sheriff is a vampire and the town is a sort of purgatory where dead gunslingers go as a sort of reprieve from getting sent to Hell. (All they have to do is manage to not get killed a second time.) There are packs of marauding Indians and marauding werewolves alike. The whole thing is as much fun as it sounds. I love Casey’s work, and I look forward to future installments in this series. By all means, buy a copy of DEAD INDIAN WARS and read it.