Bone Rattler Eliot Pattison Carroll & Graf Sept. 2007 $24.99

The comparisons to James Fenimore Cooper will be inevitable with Eliot Pattison's new release, Bone Rattler. Designed as a series there's plenty of action in this densely packed first novel to make one wonder how Mr. Pattison will top himself. With Scotland up in arms against England, Duncan McCallum, has been exiled to America for innocently harboring his Scots rabble rousing uncle. While on the prison ship, bound there, some of the men Duncan's befriended are murdered. They have left him vague and cryptic warnings of some sinister reason as to why these particular prisoners are headed for the vast wilds of the interior of America. Half the prisoners are killers, the other half are more than familiar with death and diseased bodies. McCallum, for example, is just short of being a medical doctor.

These men, some actual grave robbers, know the human body enough to distinguish its many ways of dying. Ahead lies the Ramsey Estate/Co. to which Duncan has been indentured. There's a mysterious beauty, Ramsey's daughter, naturally, a mysterious British military officer, a mysterious English Vicar and shifting rivalries between the Indians, the Scots, the British and the French. It's a lot to take on. Pattison's Duncan McCallum seems up to the task. For the reader there's a lot to look forward to. Bone Rattler is certainly different from the Inspector Shan books in many ways but if you enjoyed Skull Mantra and Bone Mountain and Water Touching Stone you'll likely find some philosophical similarities beyond Mr. Pattison's writing style and will also enjoy Bone Rattler and the novels to follow.

Dave Biemann