Desperate Rider by Frank O’Rourke

 

Tony Casper stood at the Colombian bar with his friends, drinking wine, acquiring that tipsy feeling of magnitude. Hat pushed up on jet black hair, accentuating his narrow, handsome face in which his mother's blood dominated, he laughed uproariously at a joke and lifted his glass. This was his element-- the cheap bar, the cheap wine, the friendless friends.

That character description is from the 1959 novel Desperate Rider by Mr. O’Rourke. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, the man is practically second to none when it comes to limning a character or even a town in a line.

Where many stick with the physical description, O’Rourke let’s us know his weary opinion of Tony and the Tonys of the world with the single line: This was his element-- the cheap bar, the cheap wine, the friendless friends.

O’Rourke’s characters and towns are seldom all good, or all bad. Seldom are they mere plot pawns, they are human beings or environments that shape the human beings that inhabit it.

The novel plays like a Western version of the classic gangster flick The Desperate Hours. It is a self-contained piece.

While not O’Rourke’s strongest work, there is more than enough intelligence, human observation and fine craft to keep the Western genre appreciator turning the pages.

I’ve said before, Mr. O’Rourke, is one of my favorite genre novelists, even if his work is inconsistent—I still always find something worthy of mulling within.