Mike Resnick wrote a trilogy a few years ago featuring Jefferson Nighthawk – the Widowmaker. Or rather clones of the Widowmaker, clones created to earn bounties to pay for continuing medical care of the original. The Widowmaker is legendary, he is the greatest bounty hunter in all of history. Or he was.

For with his medical condition now cured, the sixty year old Jefferson has decided to retire. But as the galaxy is not going to leave him alone, there being far too many people in it who want to make their reputation by killing the Widowmaker, and Jefferson does not want to risk his beloved Sarah – he decides to create another clone, train him and send him out to continue the career of the Widowmaker. And hopefully allow him to enjoy his retirement.

The problem is his latest clone is too reckless and Ito Kinoshita (a man who served all the Widowmakers in the first three books) believes the clone may have been sent out into the galaxy before he was truly ready. So he leaves the service of the current clone and heads off to find the original Jefferson Nighthawk and to persuade him to intervene and continue teaching the new Widowmaker how ot fill the role.

So the original heads to New Barcelona and starts in on is way of attracting the attention of the current Widowmaker. This method is to select the most dangerous criminals with the largest bounties and claim the rewards, so that the clone would notice and come looking.

I may have mentioned before that Mike Resnick is rather partial to stories of bounty hunters. In fact his universe has much in common with America's in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for although there are great areas of settled highly developed civilised worlds, there is also a frontier, an area of semi-lawlessness where his larger than life characters live.

And thankfully he manages to find more and more stories in this frontier zone without it feeling as though he's merely revisiting and rehashing former glories. Far from it, for despite the repeated visits in numerous novels to this vast realm, each tale is fresh, vibrant and completely addictive.

Resnick is an adventure author, he's not going to fill his tales with high scientific content – if you want high concept or tales of scientific innovation and progress then choose another author. But if what you want when you pick up a book is to be entertained and to enjoy a comfortable read then this would be a good choice for you. But, be warned – there is the chance that you will find it difficult not to just say "one more chapter", and all likelihood is that this book could make you late for the rest of your life.