Created by W.L. Ripley
And a-hunting we will go…
Bow-hunter and Vietnam vet WYATT STORME is a former Dallas Cowboy wide receiver who walked away from football at his peak, fed up with the politics of the NFL, to become a “freelance troubleshooter.”
Then again, Wyatt’s a bit of a recluse, anyway–he prefers hunting out in the woods around his remote cabin in the ass end of Missouri’s Ozarks to just about anywhere that the ugly hand of political correctness might hold sway.
The one exception being the love-of-his-life, anchorperson from Denver (whose name I can recall. So sue me–I’m not perfect). Wyatt also has a sometime-sidekick, the heavy-drinking , but never drunk, former C.I.A. operative Chick Easton. Wyatt has a dry wit, as opposed to Chick’s flat-out, insulting brashness. A veteran with considerable combat skill and an expert archer/ marksman, with above average tracking skills, Wyatt possesses Spenser-like loyalty, but with half the patience of Boston’s finest.
What slays me, however, is that the bewildering original cover for the first book in the series, Dreamsicle (1993). It’s not enough that the title itself is about as far from Storme’s bloody, bare-knuckled world as you can get, but to then saddle it with a cover that’s all pastels and nostalgic hints of, I don’t know, a pleasant Sunday drive?
Yikes!
No wonder that when Brash Books re-released the the first three books in the series a couple of decades later, they decided to rename the first book “Hail Storme,” and upped the brooding, dark machismo quotient of the cover graphics. They also published a fourth novel, Storme Warning (2015).
Missouri born-and-bred W.L. Ripley has worked as a teacher, a college basketball coach and a sports reporter, and enjoys watching football, playing golf,  his grandkids, and enjoying a good cigar when his wife, Penny, lets him. He Ripley lives in Western Missouri with Penny, a small army of dogs. Besides the Wyatt storme books, he writes a series about Cole Springer, an enigmatic ex-secret service agent, and a standalone (so far) about Vegas security expert Conner McBride.
UNDER OATH
- “Storme is one of my all-time favorite series characters, up there with Spenser and Dave Robicheaux.”
— Ace Atkins - “In the tough-guy–protagonist-and-tougher-sidekick subgenre, Wyatt and Chick deserve billing just below Parker’s Spenser and Hawk and Crais’ Elvis Cole and Joe Pike.”
— Booklist
NOVELS
- Dreamsicle (1993; aka “Hail Storme”) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Storme Front (1994) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Electric Country Roulette (1996; aka “Eye of the Storme”) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Storme Warning (2015) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
