Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Though he had always been a careful planner, life on the frontier had long ago convinced him of the fragility of plans. The truth was, most plans did fail, to one degree or another, for one reason or another. He had survived as a Ranger because he was quick to respond to what he had actually found, not because his planning was infallible.

What can be said of a book that is likely familiar to most?

It can be wagered that many know it by reputation or from viewing of many of its TV incarnations.

It would be a shame if that passing familiarity were all that were tasted as a deep dive into the hundreds of pages of this novel pays rewards in ways that the moving image cannot, no matter how well that image is limned.

Let’s take one scene, from both, one that likely most viewers are familiar with, the river crossing that ends in the tragic death of a young Irish cowboy by multiple snakebite.

Call knelt by the boy, helpless to do one thing for him. It was the worst luck — to come all the way from Ireland and then ride into a swarm of water moccasins. 

Call said nothing. The boy’s age had nothing to do with what had happened, of course; even an experienced man, riding into such a mess of snakes, wouldn’t have survived. He himself might not have, and he had never worried about snakes. It only went to show what he already knew, which was that there were more dangers in life than even the sharpest training could anticipate. Allen O’Brien should waste no time on guilt, for a boy could die in Ireland as readily as elsewhere, however safe it might appear.

‘It seems too quick,’ he said. ‘It seems very quick, just to ride off and leave the boy. He was the babe of our family,’ he added. 

‘If we was in town we’d have a fine funeral,’ Augustus said. ‘But as you can see, we ain’t in town. There’s nothing you can do but kick your horse.’ 

The novel has a depth that strikes one as more than mere entertainment. Truly one for the ages.

City of Widows by Loren D. Estleman

I turned in time to see the last of perhaps a dozen women step off the boardwalk on the other side of the street and turn in the direction of the mission. They were dressed all in black from bonnets to shoes, their black hems dragging like crows’ wings in the dust of the street. One or two fingered rosaries; the rest clutched their shawls at the throat and stared straight ahead as they walked, moving with a kind of bicycling gait that raised a yellow plume in their wake. The group swept along like some low-hanging cloud and seemed to drain the life from everything it passed.

One of Estelman’s long-running Page Murdock series which, like Max Allan Collins’ PI Nate Heller series, places a fictional protagonist in the midst of well-researched actual events and personages.

Estleman has been around a long time and I’ll admit there is some of his work that strikes me cold while professional and at others, this being one of them, he strikes me as one of the best in the genre.

This is a mighty entertaining genre Western well above the standard formulaic fare.

I can offer no better praise than the blurb on the cover of the paperback copy from Elmore “Dutch” Leonard himself.

“I was going to see how City of Widows opens and read 55 pages. It’s a honey.”

It is indeed.

Missing by Sam Hawken

Gonzalo took a few desultory bites and then put his fork down. ‘I never saw this as a game, Jack. I did what I had to do because that is the way things are supposed to be carried out. We don’t live in the Wild West. Mexico has laws. Maybe they aren’t well enforced, but we have to at least try, otherwise there would be anarchy.’

Sam Hawken delivers a neo-noir south of the Border contemporary Western that is a riff on Alan LeMay’s The Searchers.

Here, we have an everyman type, a building contractor widower in Laredo, Texas who is attempting to do right by his job and in the raising of his two stepdaughters.

When one goes missing in a brief visit to Mexican relatives, our protagonist seeks every legal and just method to find the girl. We feel his heartache, his anguish, his sense of duty to both the girl and the promise he made to his late wife.

When these methods fail, we proceed to the final section of the book subtitled “Off the Chain” and that descriptor does little justice to what is done.

This is a well-done neo-Western that reminds one of Don Winslow but writ small. That smallness is not an indication of effect, simply that our attention is laser focused on one man and his burden of duty.

Exceptionally well done.

Gentle Annie by MacKinlay Kantor

When we reached the place where Cotton had left his horse and buggy, we had a few moments’ conversation. The Goss brothers spoke with rare feeling about Charley Tatum and what had happened in the bar. They swore seriously and calmly, with astonishing fluency. I was to find that this was a habit they practiced by themselves; in some strange fashion it accounted for the cleanliness of their talk when they were with women or strangers or with people whom they did not like. To be admitted to a swearing bout by the Goss boys was a rare privilege; it marked one’s acceptance by them.


A Western by the author of the Pulitzer Prize winning Andersonville. I’ll confess I have not yet read Andersonville and I will also confess that this novel, my first visit with Mr. Kantor does not have me rushing to the next title.


This novel of a train-robbery investigation starts beautifully, and one knows they are in capable hands, but as it continues, we are introduced to a love-rectangle that confounds in both believability and its apparent purity.


So much time is spent on the soap opera of how these genteel amorous mechanics work that I was a bit exasperated. One is left scratching the head wondering how any single man, let alone three feel so strongly for such an exasperatingly fickle character.


We add to this concatenation of curious emotions an askew morality regarding family dynamics and robbery that we are to assume the author wishes us to sympathize with.


The fault may be this reader, but I found this novel, while well-written, a chore to finish.

Cry Dance by Kirk Mitchell

“Forgive my petulance this evening, Mr. Parker. I have this overwhelming feeling I’ll be out of a job this time next week.’

‘Well, you were looking for a job when you found this one, right?’”

Author, Kirk Mitchell, possesses a law-enforcement background and a familiarity with the areas of which he writes. This was the inaugural volume of a modern-day mystery-series featuring Bureau of Indian Affairs investigator, Emmett Quanah Parker of the Comanche tribe, and mixed-race FBI agent Anna Turnipseed.

A body that has been bizarrely mutilated is found in the Havasupai Nation, this is the incident that brings together our protagonists.

Mitchell gets the law enforcement turf wars down pat but even more interesting is the almost otherworldly interactions between different tribes. He gets the “All Indians ain’t the same” correct and walks our characters through the heady atmosphere of tribal politics and even deeper tribal belongings that manifest behavior hard to understand to an outside homogenized culture.

While the mystery works, I’ll admit that it was the insight and depth of this unusual setting that truly held my interest.

A worthy read for fans of Hillerman.

“The Last Ride” by Don Winslow

His daddy used to say that most people will do what’s right when it don’t cost much, but very few will do what’s right when it costs a lot.

Noted crime author, Don Winslow, released a volume of six novellas titled Broken. Five of these hew to his usual terse and quick-reading style and a few of them go so far as to bring back characters from past novels for another go around.

I have enjoyed Mr. Winslow much in the past, but I would be a liar if I didn’t say that this felt a bit by the numbers. It is well done mathematics but, all the same, nothing exactly new.

That is, until the last novella: “The Last Ride.”

Here Winslow takes a shot at a neo-Western in the tale of a Border Patrol agent wrestling with questions of right and wrong and the border between duty and honor.

Does it have a political bent that may rile some?

It does at that, as Mr. Winslow is not shy about his opinions. One must offer him the grace that his opinions come from a very informed place.

So how does he do in the western genre? 

Pretty damn well. This is easily the high-water mark of this volume for this reader.

It limns a complex character in almost iconic strokes and renders personal integrity in elegiac terms. 

Although it goes its own way it calls to mind Edward Abbey’s splendid The Brave Cowboy.

I’ll not rate the entire volume but this story is an easy A.

Sierra Showdown by John Reese

“Bobby, men is the cheapest thing in the world! I can buy all the men I need. It’s like buying nails—by the pound or by the keg, whichever suits you. But a man who’ll stick with you and tell you the truth and think for himself, that’s something money can’t buy.”

My first read of Mr. Reese. This is a fast-paced title put out by Fawcett Gold Medal in 1971. It is a familiar tale of beleaguered ranch versus those who wish to run owners off of the land.

On one hand it is no great shakes in originality or even events for that matter, but…I spent a pleasant afternoon with it and enjoyed the author’s interior observations.

Such as the following referring to the atmosphere around the ranch once some know trouble is on the way.

The spring wagon got there about noon. By then only six men remained. The others had drifted away by ones and twos, remembering little chores Ed wanted them to do. They would be long gone from Wild Rose Valley before this night fell, but Bobby said nothing to them. Nothing could hold a certain kind of man when the chips were all shoved in this way.

Or this…

Worse than anything else was their hunger. With a full belly a man was just about equal to anything. When it was empty, so was his heart.

Again, no great shakes, but hearty fare nevertheless.