If readers are the judge, Old Haunts is a good read. After three months, Old Haunts has garnered a 4.5 Amazon score with 88 ratings and a 4.7 Goodreads score with 44 ratings.
That doesn’t mean the novel has received exclusively high
ratings. No book does. A couple of the poorer reviews mention two issues. One of
the issues is embarrassing and the other intentional.
Guns and horses are sacrosanct to western enthusiasts. Since
he was a rich man, Steve Dancy always carries the latest in firearms. In Old Haunts, he uses a Winchester Model 1895, the first Winchester to use a box
magazine to accommodate pointed bullets. To my embarrassment, I mentioned that
he uses .30-06 ammunition. The story takes place at the end of the nineteenth
century and the .30-06 was developed in 1906 (thus the 06). I have revised
later editions to call out .30 Army ammunition.
The story also has the bad guys driving an 1896 Armstrong
Phaeton. I knew only one Armstrong Phaeton was built, but it was a unique
vehicle. A hybrid, with both a gasoline engine and an electric drive. Unfortunately,
the manufacturer went bankrupt before this horseless carriage went into
production. I thought the car was fascinating, and I needed a vehicle that
could carry four. No worries. Novelists have magical powers and, in the world I
created, the Armstrong Phaeton was available to cart around four bad guys in
style.
