THE COMPLETE EDGE - 3:Killer's Breed

The Killer’s Breed

Firstly let me say that this, the fourth Edge novel, set during the Civil War, is amongst the very best the western genre can offer. It is both a sequel to the previous book (Apache Death) and a prequel to the first book in the series (The Loner). In creating Edge, the author may have set out to write the literary version of all those anti-heroes from the then popular Italian Westerns, but the inner craftsman took over the reins and Edge was, indeed remains, an important character in the history of all western literature. To hear the author speak he regards the books as a job of work and he himself as the man doing that work, nothing more, and that’s as may be, but his instinctive talent for creating eminently readable and involving fiction is something to be cherished. And the two story threads running concurrently are handled with a deftness of hand, which is a skill which most writers, myself included, hope we too possess.

When we first met Edge, then called Joe Hedges, he was returning from the war but when he rode into his farmstead he found his kid bother brutally butchered by men who had been under his command in his army. That started him off on a vengeance trail, which resulted in his mercenary wandering and slaughtering of the second two books. This fourth volume once again picks up with him heading for the farmstead, but this time he is fevered and close to death himself after injuries sustained back in the town of Rainbow.

“Then suddenly as the blood was wiped clean, he saw the farm again: but not as it used to be before the war and the aftermath of the violence.”

When Edge reaches the farmstead he collapses, falling unconscious into the mud to be found by a young woman, Grace who is tending to Jamie’s grave without really knowing who is buried there. She, together with her mother, carry the injured, only semi-conscious Edge into the newly built house on the land that once belonged to the Hedges family. The women are along in the house, the man of the property is away, and the two women take care of the fevered man who remains anonymous to them.

The kindness and care of the two women is in direct contrast to the brutal horror going on in Edge’s mind as his fever takes him back to the time of the war, when he was a green soldier with great ideals to fight for. The Civil War battle scenes are starkly depicted and the fear of the men forced to fight their countrymen comes through to the reader. And although this novel is a standalone story the reader will get more from their story if they are familiar with earlier books, particularly, The Loner.

I was a kid when I first read these books and I remember not liking this one much because it messed with the formula and wasn’t as humorous at the rest but now, as an older and (hopefully) wiser reader I can better appreciate what the writer has done here. Indeed I think I regard this as a far more complex work than those earlier volumes and it is one of my favourites.

Here we witness Joe Hedges first meeting with Forrest and his sidekicks and the meeting is loaded with symbolism for the reader who knows that these men will, in the opening pages of the first Edge novel, The Loner, brutally kill Joe’s kid-brother and burn the farmstead to the ground. So these men represent the origin of the Edge character, they are the catalyst of all that will follow. Joe doesn’t trust these men but he realises that it is men like this who are needed to fight this brutal and dirty war.