Johnny remembered a story from the Bible when the lame and the sick gathered around a pool where an angel would stir the surface and whoever reached the water first would be healed. Except it never seemed to work. The casino felt like that, desperate people huddled and hoping for a miracle, day after day.

I’ve been raving about Alan Lee’s Mackenzie August/Sinatra novels, telling you how much fun they are. But those books didn’t prepare me for his Atlanta Burning series, two books released to date. This new series raises the stakes, takes it to a whole new level. I call it genuinely epic. Think of a fusion of the classic Western story with a Mad Max postapocalyptic thriller. With a Christian element artfully woven in. The first book is The Wild South.

This is the setting: Atlanta in the present, or maybe a few years into the future. The place has become a dystopia. Police defunding has resulted in rampant crime, the authorities helpless. In response, the government has instituted radical, controversional new rules – bounties will be placed on the worst criminals at large, and licensed bounty hunters will be permitted arrest them. Licenses aren’t hard to get. Every sane person can tell the results will be horrific.

Our hero, Johnathan “Johnny Sugar” Young, is not much interested in all that. He’s a Georgia celebrity, thanks to his college football career, in which he led his team to two Sugar Bowls, even though he quit before graduation and never even tried out for professional ball. He was a cop for a while and even took FBI training – but he quit that too. Today he’s a professional gambler, playing high stakes poker at an Atlanta casino.

He lives in the upper story of a commercial building he owns. His roommate is Kunga, a former criminal who once stabbed him with a knife, but then was born again and changed his ways. He’s now Johnny’s best friend.

Because the police only respond to emergencies nowadays, Johnny has to call in a private crime scene investigator when his property is robbed. The investigator turns out to be Bella Adams, the love of Johnny’s life, whom he hasn’t seen in years. She’s still mad at him for leaving college (and her). She tells him she’s a licensed bounty hunter, and has plans to go after her chunk of the reward money when the season opens. She knows Johnny’s skills, both as a cop and a gunman (he’s a natural), and she asks him to become her partner. Learning she has lost her apartment, he invites her to move in with him and Kunga. Thus begins an awkward but increasingly affectionate partnership.

It’s quite a ride. There’s violence here, of course, but there’s also increasing personal insight, and prophecy, and acts of heroism, and a remarkable final showdown unlike anything I’ve ever read before. I couldn’t wait to download the second book, Hell For Leather

The previous adventure ended pretty well for our heroes, Johnny, Bella, and Kunga. But Atlanta’s problems have only begun. As Hell for Leather opens, the mayor offers Johnny a post in his administration, but Johnny refuses him. He believes (correctly) that the mayor is corrupt. This makes Johnny a target, and powerful men begin plotting his destruction.

After a brief dip in crime statistics, the anarchy has returned to Atlanta, so the government raises the stakes. Now the bounty hunters will not only be permitted to arrest wanted felons. They will be permitted to arrest anyone, at any time, on mere accusation of crime. Bella wants to go hunting again, but Johnny promises only limited help. He doesn’t like the whole deal.

But he’s not prepared for the big surprise his enemies have in store for him, a surprise that will change everything and bring on a stampede of destruction — and wonder.

It’s at this point that author Lee really shows his true colors. I’ve been wondering about his faith all along as I’ve read his books. The stories are Christian-friendly, Christian-adjacent. But Hell for Leather drops all ambiguity. This is an openly Christian story, with a genuine, jaw-dropping Christian message. I salute the author’s courage in writing it this way. It will turn some readers off, but he handles the material superbly (I think). He sometimes nods in his diction, as when he says “honed in” when he wants “homed in,” or misuses “myriad.” But in terms of its effect, the prose works very well.

Hell for Leather is a Christian novel, but not CBA material. Both it and The Wild South incorporate rough language, violence, and mature situations. Johnny and Bella (who are not presented as Christians) engage in premarital sex. But if you can handle those things, these books are both thrilling and inspirational.

I say bravo.

The politics are kept fairly ambiguous – we can’t clearly tell the mayor’s party. There are some evil illegal immigrants, but then there are some sympathetic ones too.

Anyway, I highly recommend The Wild South and Hell for Leather. I eagerly await the next installment.