Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.
The notorious Doc Holliday continues to make an impact – and take lives – over a hundred and thirty years after his death in THE LONG-LOST LOVE LETTERS OF DOC HOLLIDAY by David Corbett. The novel is due out on August 18th 2018 by Black Opal.
When the long-lost love letters between Doc Holliday and his cousin Mattie reappear years after the Holliday family swore the correspondence was destroyed, Lisa Balamaro (an arts lawyer) and Tuck Mercer (reformed Western arts forger) work together to sell the unauthenticated letters on the black market. When the buyer – a corrupt judge in the Tombstone area – steals the letters, Lisa does everything she can to rectify the situation on behalf of her client, Rayella Vargas. While Lisa works on the right side of the law, others take more extreme measures to get the letters back into Rayella’s possession and leave more victims than there were following the Gunfight at the OK Corral.
The actual letters between Doc Holliday and his cousin are not the main focus of the novel, though they are included sporadically throughout. And the content of the letters have nothing to do with the overall plot of the novel. It is the fact that these letters exist that drives the plot of THE LONG-LOST LOVE LETTERS OF DOC HOLLIDAY. Whether the letters are authentic or fake remains a question throughout the novel, and that is what sets off the explosive drama surrounding the letters. THE LONG-LOST LOVE LETTERS OF DOC HOLLIDAY is an intense and interesting crime drama about art forgery and the fallout of the forgery.
I didn’t exactly like THE LONG-LOST LOVE LETTERS OF DOC HOLLIDAY, but I didn’t hate it either. Mostly I was ambivalent towards the novel and the characters. The heroes of the novel are not really heroes – they’re just slightly better than the villains – and I found that I couldn’t really connect with any of them enough to care about what happened to them. This is a great novel for anyone interested in art forgery or crime dramas. The plot is stimulating, and there is a lot of action and suspense. For anyone reading this novel because of their fascination with Doc Holliday…well, the novel really has nothing to do with Doc Holliday.