Champagne Cowboys by Leo W. Banks
The powerful sequel to Double Wide, the blockbuster Western Writers of America double Spur award winner for Best First Novel and Best Contemporary Western… and True West Magazine’s Best Western Crime Novel of the Year
A wealthy Tucson couple is murdered in a home invasion burglary-gone-horribly wrong. They were close friends of Prospero “Whip” Stark, a one-time major league phenom pitcher now living with a colorful group of outcasts in his remote, desert trailer park… and honing his detective skills reading classic crime novels. Hell-bent on justice, Whip’s search for the killers leads him to the Champagne Cowboys, a gang of thieves covering their tracks with corpses.
Books by Leo W. Banks
The Flying Z
Will Zachary leads an isolated existence running The Flying Z, a struggling, southern Arizona ranch on the Mexico border, with his aging, dementia-stricken Uncle and a ragtag crew of of fellow cowboys and town folk. His ordered life dramatically changes when Merry O'Hara, driving cross-country on her way to grad school at Stanford, takes a wrong turn into a ditch on his land...and right into the middle of a war he's fighting with a vicious cartel smuggling drugs across his ranch. Against all odds, Will and Merry are drawn to each other, at the same time they're desperately fighting, out-manned and out-gunned, to protect the ranch and their lives.
.45-Caliber Perfume
Arizona businessman Henry Belmont’s senate campaign is looking good. The cash contributions are rolling in and Mary Rose Cleary, his sexy, young campaign manager and mistress, is happy to handle the flow, as long as she can secretly pocket her cut. Complicating the picture is Henry’s conniving wife Barbara, a fading beauty with a secret criminal past and a deadly agenda. But Mary and Barbara share more than a bed with handsome Henry. They both love guns, money and sex...and know how to use them to get what they want. Now, in the brutal heat of a Phoenix summer, the lives of this scheming trio will collide in a violent explosion of betrayal, greed and murder.
Champagne Cowboys
The long-awaited sequel to DOUBLE WIDE, the double Spur Award winning novel.
Double Wide
Disgraced former baseball phenom Prospero Stark turns detective when someone leaves his former catcher's severed hand on the doorstep of his Airstream trailer. DOUBLE 2018 SPUR AWARD WINNER!!
Reviews For Champagne Cowboys
The writing flows easily, the dialogue is peppered with wry observations, the plot tightly braids its seemingly disparate strands into a fascinating pattern, and the characters zing with life. This intelligent, pleasurable western noir will have readers longing for more.
If your reading choices embrace something a bit different, coexisting with a first-rate mystery, “Champagne Cowboys" is a definite five-star read.
This book is a western through and through (with) misfit characters so clearly realized you’ll know them immediately. These are characters we run into every day in real life—the people who don’t fit in the preassigned paradigms of our society. The West becomes a character unto itself. Really enjoyable and highly recommended.
This sequel is strong enough to stand on its own merits. Author Banks gives Stark a perceptive insight into his fellow characters, as well as himself, and tosses in enough sarcastic wisecracks to keep the narrative lively and entertaining. Like the debut novel, the lesser traveled back roads of the mountains, valleys, and small towns outside the urban centers of Arizona are not only a backdrop to the plot, but also as essential to the novel’s ambiance as the characters themselves.
Champagne Cowboys stands out from the herd of mysteries and thrillers. I loved the brilliant quirkiness of its central characters, the skillful balance of tension and unexpected humor, and the celebration of Tucson and the saguaro desert. A good read from start to finish. A tip of the Stetson to author Leo Banks.
