Track (Shaun Hutson) Books in Order

The Track novels are Hutson’s take on the hard boiled Western, originally published under the pseudonym Samuel P. Bishop. Instead of supernatural monsters or modern city streets, these books prowl the lawless landscapes of the post–Civil War American West, but the tone, brutality and fascination with damaged men will feel familiar to his horror readers.

The first book, Track, introduces a former Confederate soldier who has discovered that his appetite for violence did not end with the war. Nicknamed for the way he follows his prey, he works as a bounty hunter, making his living by hunting down outlaws for the reward money. His latest job is Lone Wolf, a vicious half breed whose raids leave burned farms and massacred families in their wake. On the ruined homestead of one such attack, Track rescues Holly Fulton, a young woman whose skill with a rifle and burning need for revenge almost match his own. Their uneasy partnership drags them through ambushes, running gunfights and the kind of moral compromises that come with treating human lives as targets.

Partners in Death brings Track and Holly together again, this time on the trail of gunman Jim Galton. The bounty on Galton’s head is high enough that Track will not let anyone stand in his way, including the woman who insists Galton shot in self defence. As rival posses close in and the landscape itself becomes an enemy, the novel plays out as a brutal chase story in which hunter and hunted may need to join forces just to survive.

In Apache Gold the war is further behind but killing is still Track’s trade. Rumours of a vast stash of stolen gold, hidden on Apache land, tempt both the US Army and greedy prospectors, and Track sees a chance to settle an old score and get rich at the same time. Capturing a feared war chief puts him in the middle of a three way struggle between Native warriors, brutal officers and treacherous civilians, with April Jacobs, a woman as ruthless as he is, complicating every decision.

Across the trilogy the West is not a place of heroic cowboys and clear moral lines. Towns are shabby, the army is often corrupt and almost everyone is out for themselves. Track himself is far from a traditional hero. He kills because he is good at it, not because he is trying to tame the frontier, and even when he finds people he cares about they are never fully safe from his single minded pursuit of a bounty.

For readers used to Hutson’s horror novels, the Track books offer the same stripped down prose and willingness to describe violence in graphic detail, just traded from mutant slugs and cults to six shooters, ambushes and snowbound passes.