Wild Texas Heart

James's ( Crimson Obsession ) occasionally melodramatic romance can tax one's credulity but it also possesses a number of pleasing elements: a strong hero and feisty heroine, a sharply defined setting in early 20th-century Texas oil country, and an air of mystery to move the plot along. When Samuel Irons finds a savagely beaten woman sprawled at the feet of a hanged man, he takes her into town and makes her his own. The traumatized woman's memory is a blank when Paul Breckenridge appears, calls her Fan, and claims she is the wife of his brother Rex, the hanged man. Paul leaves her in what he says is her home--a filthy hovel--and Irons joins her there. When the two detect possible indicators of an oil field, Irons brings in men and drilling equipment. Unfortunately Standard Oil's goons have similar ideas, and life turns unpleasantly exciting when they try to ``persuade'' Fan to lease her land. Moreover, Irons, suspicious of the nasty Breckenridge, believes that there's more to Fan's history than Paul has suggested and that whoever battered her might try to finish the job--but he has no idea why. (Nov.)