Panhandle Justice - Bruce Todd

The frontier is dead. But the blood feuds are just beginning.

Amarillo, 1922. The dusty trails of the Old West are being paved over by progress, and the law is now found in books rather than at the end of a rope. But for Marshal Ben Lowery-a man once known as the "Ghost of the Guadalupe"-the past is a shadow that refuses to fade.

When Slim Davis, a Black pioneer and aging hotel porter, kills the son of a powerful cattle king in self-defense, the city of Amarillo teeters on the edge of a race war. To Big John Thompson, it's murder. To the law, it's a trial. To the lynch mob gathering at the jailhouse doors, it's an opportunity for vengeance.

Lowery finds himself trapped between a corrupt dynasty and a modern world he doesn't fully understand. His only allies are a cynical deputy with a pocket full of bribe money and a "silver-spoon" lawyer fighting a battle he's destined to lose.

As a seven-year-old debt of blood comes due and the "Unwritten Law" of the plains clashes with the scales of justice, Lowery must decide if he is still the predator he was as a Ranger, or the protector a new Texas desperately needs.

In the Panhandle, the truth is often buried deep in the mud. And sometimes, justice is the hardest thing to find alive.