Dead Man’s Gospel:
About
By Reno Bachman
The West does not forget what it teaches.
Timothy Gospel is a man shaped by fire, silence, and scripture spoken with the wrong intent. In a land where belief becomes leverage and mercy is never free, he moves carefully, listening, learning, enduring.
Outlaws organize. Lawmen follow rumors. Faith becomes justification.
This is not a story of redemption.
It is a story of proximity, how close men stand to violence before it becomes habit.
Dead Man’s Gospel is a psychological Western about restraint, consequence, and the cost of letting belief speak too loudly.
Nothing here asks for forgiveness.
Trailer
Praise for this book
★★★★★ — Readers’ Favorite
Dead Man's Gospel by Reno Bachman is a riveting psychological Western that introduces us to Timothy Gospel, a man scarred by violence since his childhood and who then, as an adult, inflicted it.
Timothy is on the run, seeking sanctuary in the hills and forests inhabited by Indigenous tribes and hermit communities. On his journey, he engages with a preacher's voice in his mind. Parallel to Timothy's adventures, Pinkerton private investigators are working on a lucrative contract. They are tasked with finding a black man with a gun. Struggling with limited information, they hire an Indigenous tracker. Are the Pinkertons looking for Timothy? And will Timothy find the sanctuary he craves?
Reno Bachman's Dead Man's Gospel is praiseworthy for its psychological exploration of violence, mercy, repentance, forgiveness, faith, fear, grief, death, and survival. Timothy's quest gripped me with its cinematically atmospheric and thought-provoking mental discourse between Timothy's mind and the preacher's voice in his head. Timothy's and the Pinkertons' travels made me wonder how many facets and driving forces violence can have. I thoroughly enjoyed how the scenes alternated, gradually reconstructing the story of Timothy's life, the complete picture eventually coming together from disjointed fragments. It was also a rare story that made me root for the "villain" Timothy and fervently hope for the "do-gooder" Pinkertons to fail!
I listened to the audio version, and the duration was immensely satisfying. It was narrated by digital voice Quentin Ever-Ready, and I think it was the perfect fit for this story. I enjoyed the husky male timbre, the clear and distinct diction, the perfect pacing, and the top-quality recording. The musical composition at the end of the book was a special cherry on this tasty cake. If you like psychological thrillers and do not mind mild to moderate violence and sex that accentuate the key messages and morals of this story, this book will not disappoint you.
REVIEWED BY Olga Markova
★★★★ — Reedsy Discovery
In Dead Man's Gospel by Reno Bachman, Timothy Gospel, a damaged young man who grew up in the orbit of a charismatic and powerful man known as The Preacher,is on the trail of one of his former associates, the outlaw queen, Mad Dog Maggie. Maggie had once shown Timothy and his mother a small but inexplicable kindness when they needed it most, and with vengeance-seeking men hunting him, he hopes to find sanctuary with her one more time. Meanwhile, two Pinkerton men have been commissioned to track down the Black Gunman, who is wanted for murder. As his trail overlaps Timothy's, the Pinkertons are reeled into both cases, but will justice be served when the journeys finally converge?
Once again, author Reno Bachman absolutely stuns with carefully crafted prose and an eye for vivid mental images. You quickly realize Timothy Gospel is wounded beyond the physical marks left by The Preacher's deliberately inflicted burns, punishment meted out for the theft of a loaf of bread. Timothy also carries the voice of the (now) dead Preacher in his head, his constant companion and antagonist. The voice takes over at times, and when Timothy regains awareness, he discovers he's committed terrible acts while declaiming scripture.
On his trail (because Timothy is traveling in the wake of the elusive Black Gunman) are the two Pinkerton men, Bates and Harker. Their initial assignment is to apprehend the gunman, but as they search for his whereabouts, they are encouraged to include Timothy Gospel in their hunt, as he has killed the son of a powerful and influential man with connections to make that happen. The travels of the pursued and pursuers take them through the post-Civil War West, a landscape with few and far between small towns, many abandoned and derelict or the hidden havens for outlaws, with vast expanses uninhabited by while settlers, yet populated nonetheless by indigenous peoples.
The author imbues every step of their journeys with the feeling that they are being watched and tracked, only one wrong move from disaster. While a satisfied reader, I did have some issues with the story's readability, as the page layout made it difficult to follow conversations at times. Having to re-read passages really slowed the flow of the dialogue and, consequently, the book itself.
Additionally, the author doesn't identify some characters by name when they are first introduced, instead using the generic "a man" or "the man." Later, when new names were mentioned without introductory context, I had to backtrack to figure out who he meant, not knowing whether they would prove to be pivotal characters later or not. This book follows the trail of consequences established by events in the author's previous work set in this universe, The Boy, so readers should read that novella before jumping into this story, and although this book doesn't end in a cliffhanger, a late-hour plot twist guarantees there's more story yet to come. I recommend DEAD MAN'S GOSPEL to readers of Western fiction.
REVIEWED BY Karen Siddall