A Town Called Mercy
(2025)(The eighth book in the Jack Hardesty/ Kit Sloan Western Adventure series)
A novel by Jamie Mason and C Wayne Winkle
Mercy looks like a polite little town. Scratch the surface, and it bleeds secrets.
When U.S. Marshal Jack Hardesty rides into Mercy, Texas, he expects boredom, paperwork, and maybe the occasional drunk. What he finds instead is a town that smiles too easily, hides too much, and has already lost one sheriff under suspicious circumstances.
Hardesty is the wrong man for a job that calls for tact. He’s blunt, ill-tempered, and allergic to politics. But he knows killers, liars, and cowards when he sees them—and Mercy has all three in abundance. The previous sheriff’s ‘suicide’ doesn’t sit right with him, and when the town’s mayor is murdered within hours of Hardesty’s arrival, the marshal realizes he’s stepped into something rotten to the core.
Everywhere he turns, influential citizens close ranks. Witnesses contradict each other. Evidence disappears. A powerful banker maneuvers behind closed doors. And the deeper Hardesty digs, the clearer it becomes that Mercy isn’t just hiding one crime—it’s built on them. In a place where social standing matters more than the law, enforcing justice may cost Hardesty his badge… or his life.
With only a hard-drinking priest and a sharp-eyed street kid willing to stand at his side, Hardesty must decide whether to back down, play along, or tear the whole town open and let the truth crawl out screaming.
Gritty, darkly humorous, and steeped in classic Western atmosphere, A Town Called Mercy delivers a hard-edged mystery where the badge doesn’t earn respect, the smiles can’t be trusted, and justice comes only when a man is stubborn enough to demand it.
Ride into Mercy today—and find out what happens when the wrong marshal is sent to the most dangerous town in Texas.
Genre: Western
When U.S. Marshal Jack Hardesty rides into Mercy, Texas, he expects boredom, paperwork, and maybe the occasional drunk. What he finds instead is a town that smiles too easily, hides too much, and has already lost one sheriff under suspicious circumstances.
Hardesty is the wrong man for a job that calls for tact. He’s blunt, ill-tempered, and allergic to politics. But he knows killers, liars, and cowards when he sees them—and Mercy has all three in abundance. The previous sheriff’s ‘suicide’ doesn’t sit right with him, and when the town’s mayor is murdered within hours of Hardesty’s arrival, the marshal realizes he’s stepped into something rotten to the core.
Everywhere he turns, influential citizens close ranks. Witnesses contradict each other. Evidence disappears. A powerful banker maneuvers behind closed doors. And the deeper Hardesty digs, the clearer it becomes that Mercy isn’t just hiding one crime—it’s built on them. In a place where social standing matters more than the law, enforcing justice may cost Hardesty his badge… or his life.
With only a hard-drinking priest and a sharp-eyed street kid willing to stand at his side, Hardesty must decide whether to back down, play along, or tear the whole town open and let the truth crawl out screaming.
Gritty, darkly humorous, and steeped in classic Western atmosphere, A Town Called Mercy delivers a hard-edged mystery where the badge doesn’t earn respect, the smiles can’t be trusted, and justice comes only when a man is stubborn enough to demand it.
Ride into Mercy today—and find out what happens when the wrong marshal is sent to the most dangerous town in Texas.
Genre: Western
Used availability for C Wayne Winkle's A Town Called Mercy