Mercy Killing
(2026)(The ninth book in the Jack Hardesty/ Kit Sloan Western Adventure series)
A novel by Jamie Mason and C Wayne Winkle
In Mercy, justice wears a badge—if it survives the night.
When U.S. Marshal Jack Hardesty and his deputy, Kit Sloan, take up posts in the booming West Texas town of Mercy, they expect cattle thieves, drunken brawls, maybe the occasional gunhand looking to test his nerve. What they find instead is a town rotting beneath a polished surface—political corruption, secret tunnels, rival power blocs, and a mayor who smiles too easily in the dark.
A respected mayor has already been murdered. A former sheriff hanged himself under suspicious circumstances. A secretive temperance society pulls strings behind closed doors. And beneath the streets of Mercy runs a hidden world of old opium tunnels and buried secrets that refuse to stay buried.
As tensions explode between the calculating Mayor Damian Shrike and the enigmatic Chief Plentygood, Hardesty finds himself targeted by hired killers from his past—men who believe he murdered their mother and have come to collect blood for blood. When the Chief’s daughter vanishes and gunfire erupts in Chinatown’s shadowed alleys, Mercy teeters on the edge of open war.
Hardesty doesn’t back down. He never has. But in a town where power shifts like a rigged card game and even the law can be manipulated, keeping the peace may cost him more than his badge.
MERCY KILLING is a hard-driving Marshal Hardesty / Deputy Sloan Western packed with political intrigue, ruthless gunmen, shadow conspiracies, and frontier justice delivered at point-blank range.
In Mercy, survival isn’t about being the fastest draw…it’s about who controls the town when the music stops.
Genre: Western
When U.S. Marshal Jack Hardesty and his deputy, Kit Sloan, take up posts in the booming West Texas town of Mercy, they expect cattle thieves, drunken brawls, maybe the occasional gunhand looking to test his nerve. What they find instead is a town rotting beneath a polished surface—political corruption, secret tunnels, rival power blocs, and a mayor who smiles too easily in the dark.
A respected mayor has already been murdered. A former sheriff hanged himself under suspicious circumstances. A secretive temperance society pulls strings behind closed doors. And beneath the streets of Mercy runs a hidden world of old opium tunnels and buried secrets that refuse to stay buried.
As tensions explode between the calculating Mayor Damian Shrike and the enigmatic Chief Plentygood, Hardesty finds himself targeted by hired killers from his past—men who believe he murdered their mother and have come to collect blood for blood. When the Chief’s daughter vanishes and gunfire erupts in Chinatown’s shadowed alleys, Mercy teeters on the edge of open war.
Hardesty doesn’t back down. He never has. But in a town where power shifts like a rigged card game and even the law can be manipulated, keeping the peace may cost him more than his badge.
MERCY KILLING is a hard-driving Marshal Hardesty / Deputy Sloan Western packed with political intrigue, ruthless gunmen, shadow conspiracies, and frontier justice delivered at point-blank range.
In Mercy, survival isn’t about being the fastest draw…it’s about who controls the town when the music stops.
Genre: Western
Used availability for C Wayne Winkle's Mercy Killing