Heath Walker is a bartender and a small-time pot dealer whose life turns bloody after he meets tough, beautiful Rori Burke. Her father is a corrupt, murderous local sheriff who hires a vicious bounty hunter named Art Dominguez to kill Heath and deliver his daughter back. As the young couple tries to escape to Mexico, death follows them. Nix Xander Wolf’s SHADOW VALLEY tells a gritty story about desperate people doing desperate crimes. They live in a lawless world of violence, betrayal, and death. Since Heath is aggressive and prone to violence, he should fit in perfectly. But the thing is: he doesn’t want to. He is an orphan and a past victim of abuse. It was only after a kindly elderly couple adopted him that Heath tried to take control of his demons. The question is: will he succumb to them now?

SHADOW VALLEY can be easily categorized as a pulpy, hard-boiled crime story. However, author Wolf is a bit more ambitious than that. His novel tackles the idea of the self-perpetuating nature of abuse and how the victims themselves can become abusers. While this insight isn’t new, it is worth pointing out since so many problems with aggression and violence come down to fear and trauma. Heath Walker and the bounty hunter Art Dominguez are similar. It’s just that Dominguez took that final plunge into the darkness. However, the story–and the author–also use the talk of abuse to justify the violent acts of its protagonists. For example, the novel implies that the victims of Dominguez had it coming because they are terrible people. And, since even extreme crimes go unreported and unpunished, vigilantism seems like the only sensible solution. A more charitable read is that the bounty hunter is merely justifying his actions and is no better than his victims. And yet, his ultimate fate implies the author has a more sympathetic view of Dominguez than this reviewer. Overall, more squeamish readers should be aware that there are some graphic and brutal descriptions of violence and the way the novel treats sensitive subject matter such as abuse is, arguably, somewhat problematic.

In SHADOW VALLEY, author Nix Xander Wolf crafts a fast-paced, taut and gritty crime story about desperate people doing terrible crimes.

~Danijel Štriga for IndieReader