Fifty yards north of the station stood the
roadhouse, the Broken Arrow, set back behind its dusty parking lot. It was a
big rectangle sided with brown boards; there were no windows at all. The name
of the place was painted in a faded crescent across the movie-set false front
and an illuminated Coors Beer sign overhung the front door. The place had a
forbidding aspect, like a slaughterhouse: the grim solid walls without windows
gave the impression someone was ashamed of what went on inside.
This neo-Western penned in the 1970s by the talented
Mr. Garfield is set in the southwest of the 70s.
We follow a Navajo law officer by the name of Sam
Watchman as he is assigned to trail an escaped Apache Convict named
Threepersons.
The landscape, the heat, the inter-tribal animosity,
the outside press of Anglo ostracism are all portrayed beautifully.
We ride with Watchman on his contemporary manhunt for
the first half of the novel and then…and then we begin to insert politics, a convoluted
conspiracy involving water-rights, infidelity, past crimes remote to us and…well,
the trouble is, the manhunt and Watchman on his on are compelling as hell.
These additional complications, less so.
This is a well-written briskly paced novel.
What’s good is very good.
What did not hold this reader may hold others.
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