“I try to show things as they were, warts and all, but the physical descriptions
are accurate. I’ve ridden and hunted the land and I can tell you that the Grand
Tetons are snow-covered in August. But the snow is too dirty to eat or boil down
for coffee, and I’ve tried to paint these things as they are.”
That quote is not from
the book, but from an interview given by the author Jack Ehrlich on his
approach. That is a mighty fine descriptor of what we find in this hard-bitten
1976 novel.
A young woman has been
raped and murdered and our town marshal protagonist attempts to ferret out the culprit
and finds out some mighty unpleasant things along the way.
Malignant revelations regarding
the girl, those who knew her, the nature of justice, and the nature of the law
itself which does not always coincide.
The novel is written
as Ehrlich describes his work, truthfully. It may not be pretty, but it is some
mighty fine reading.
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