Matthew and I are friends. But friendship notwithstanding, he’s also a bloody good writer and Dark Frontier exemplifies that. Unlike Matthew’s other historical fiction, which is set in the early medieval, Dark Frontier takes place a thousand years later and in a land that the protagonists of his other books didn’t even know existed. But, as Matthew once said to me, his other books are really Westerns in disguise and, for this book, the disguise comes off!

But Matthew has the authorial nous to know that we, the readers, are not necessarily familiar with life in Oregon at the end of the 19th century. To bridge the gap, Matthew makes the hero not one of the laconic cowboys who inhabit that landscape naturally but a travelling Englishman, a London detective escaping his past. That naturally gives us an outsider’s perspective on the action, which is one we share as readers who don’t live or know the time and place we’re visiting, and it’s a bit of a masterstroke. Gabriel Stokes serves as everyman as well as protagonist and hero, allowing us into the story alongside him, and introducing us to this new world.

As for the world, Matthew writes about it as if he grew up in the saddle rather than in Sunderland (OK, I’m not sure exactly where he grew up, but it was somewhere up north and Sunderland allows for alliteration!). This is a great addition to Matthew’s formidable library of stories and I hope he will write many more Westerns. The genre is due for a rediscovery and Matthew might just be the man to do it.