reviews_and_ramblings | A Hundred Little Lies by Jon Wilson

If you expect to read you classical western romance (even with the addition of the gay element), A Hundred Little Lies will surprise you. Western romance are mostly about midday appointment under the sun, or corrupted small town where justice is not at home, or bittered men who are searching for vengeance. But that is not the case here, and even if, like in an old classic western romance, Jack Tulle has a past he would prefer to forget, and being forgotten, that is basically the only common element you will find.

What is probably the most interesting plot device is that it’s really difficult to identify who is the good fellow and who is the villain, probably since actually, no one really fit any of those roles. Now, in a good western romance, you can have the real villain, the bad guy, the one that of course will be dead at the end of the story, or the good villain, mostly a wonderful rogue, the man all the women (and in this case also men) would like in their bed at night, but that they have to avoid by day. That should be the role of Tom Jude, Jack’s former lover and partner in crime; but when Tom enters the scene, instead of being bad and vindictive towards Jack, he is almost regretful, like Jack was his true love, and now that they are back together, nothing will move him from his side (thus nothing strange if we find them rolling on the hay no later than the first night; but don’t worry, this book is not really about sex, and the encounters are almost chaste, at least in the way to write about them). So no, Tom is not the villain, but he is not even the good boy, since he is also unsettling Jack’s comfortable life in Bodey, Colorado, threatening to reveal that in no way Jack can be Abigail’s father, and he well know why.

On the other side there is Jack, the good fellow, isn’t it right? The good daddy of 8 years old Abigail, the quiet drugstore owner, the good citizen that is fighting to not have corruption in his city; of course he is doing it for the good of the town, or maybe he is doing it to avoid people he may know coming too near to him, or maybe he is doing it since he knows he is even too much corruptible? Page after page, the good fellow’s image of Jack is falling down, like a cheap paint covering a scandalous picture. But, as almost always happen, the scandalous picture is more interesting of the boring paint, and if it took Jack a hundred little lies to paint that picture, well then, he did a good job.

If the reader is wondering how two men can be lovers in the XIX century Far West and still being alive, well the answer is simple… almost no one notice; if neither their own friends and colleagues noticed when they were together every day doing their business, probably no one will notice in a small town where people believe they are nothing else than good friends since their childhood. I can easily imagining their possible future together, mistaken for very, very good friends, and if someone is wondering about their bachelorhood, well they can always think they are both mourning the loss of Abigail’s mother, Jack’s wife and maybe Tom’s unrequited love?

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Amazon: A Hundred Little Lies
Amazon Kindle: A Hundred Little Lies
Paperback: 216 pages
Publisher: Cheyenne Publishing (March 15, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0982826753
ISBN-13: 978-0982826751

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