Excellent crime novel. Lean and not overstuffed. Dunn is a new writer to watch in the Elmore Leonard mode, which is high praise indeed.

I think thrillers are the genre that Robert E. Dunn excels at over all others, and Dead Man’s Badge is no different. Robert is one of my favorite writers, and this book is another winner in my opinion. From the beginning Longview, the protagonist, who was by all accounts a bad guy, was likable to me. He came from a family of law men and somewhere along the line, like many of us, made a few choices that didn’t go well. Robert has the great ability to create strong characters. Not the flat, glossed over, or thinly written kind, but the ones that as the book ends I want to keep reading about. This was never truer than when I read the Katrina Williams novels.
Longview was looking for something redeeming about his life. His choices were messy, sketchy and nothing less than short sighted at best. Robert continues to create characters that are searching for something deep within themselves, while walking the tight rope between life and death. Longview learns the hard way that life doesn’t care and you aren’t all that important. As his story arc developed, he tried to make decisions that set him on a better path.
While Longview was pretending to be his half-brother, he had taken his crazy life choices to another level. Threading the needle between being good and bad was exciting for me to watch, and the hard edge of his character made it all the better. While playing lawman, it felt like his house of cards could be destroyed at a moment’s notice. The mystery was complex and kept me guessing until the end and I dug that because I typically don't figure it all out sooner. I hope I'll meet up with Longview again in a sequel, that’s how much I loved this book!

Action packed page turned set in a backdrop of noir small town crime fiction.
Loved every page, will recommand to a lot of folks.

Wow! Wow! Wow! Revenge, The Mexican Cartel, crooked cops, corruption, betrayal, gun battles, murder, greed, good guys, bad guys, .....oh! And one HELL of a good story! Loved it! Quentin Tarantino wishes he had written this!

Dead Man's Badge is a full-bore violent nasty modern Southwestern noir that begins with the main character digging his own grave at gunpoint somewhere near Juarez and almost never lets up the frenetic pace. The initial action comes at you with no letup.

It's got a lot of classic ingredients like the criminal on the run from the drug cartel, the two half brothers, one a crook, the other a lawman, and both with daddy issues, the stranger riding into town with every hand turned against him, the mesmerizing vixen who has him in her crosshairs, and plenty of double crosses and betrayals.

The area on both sides of America's Southern border is an increasingly lawless void where corruption and feed breed. There's no sugar coating it here. It's nasty, raw, hardnosed, and quite a page turner. And it's filled with darkness, hopelessness, and despair.