Pale Blue Light – Civil War fiction, with espionage and plenty of action – #bookreview

 

Pale Blue Light

Skip Tucker

(NewSouth Books – paperback, Kindle)

 

Alabama novelist Skip Tucker has taken a still-lively Civil War controversy and expanded it into an imaginative tale that blends historical fiction with murder mystery, spy vs. spy, and plenty of action.

Tucker’s protagonist, Rabe Canon, is a general in the Confederacy’s Black Horse Cavalry. He also is a man unafraid to engage in dangerous missions and individual heroics, especially when he is astride, or close by, his big, well-trained horse, Hammer.

When Canon is sent on a special mission that could possibly help save the South from defeat, the story flows from the Civil War’s eastern battlefields to gold-rich San Francisco and back again, and Canon gets into fights for his life at almost every stop.

This lively, entertaining novel unfolds like a movie. Indeed, Pale Blue Light could make an excellent movie worthy of a John Wayne-style, action-hero star, if anyone in Hollywood is paying attention.

— Si Dunn