An intriguing but flawed debut Western.
A Pinkerton detective doggedly pursues an old enemy in Fetter’s debut historical novella.
In 1882, a train is hauling a massive shipment of bank notes and gold from San Francisco to Tucson, Arizona. Someone tips off the outlaw Barksdale Gang, who intercept the delivery. But they didn’t anticipate running into Pinkerton agent Henry Wheeler, who’s traveling undercover as a mild-mannered Bible salesman. Wheeler, a Confederate Civil War veteran, served in the same unit as the gang’s leader, Kirby Barksdale, and his little brother, Danny; together, they raided Union supply trains until Kirby’s betrayal resulted in Wheeler’s injury and capture. The war is long over now, but for Wheeler, old wounds haven’t healed, and he aims to bring Kirby to justice. However, things don’t go as planned, and a bloody clash results in the deaths of gang members and railroad employees. Kirby escapes with most of the cash, while Wheeler locks Danny up in a Tucson jail, overseen by a morally dubious deputy. Wheeler makes plans to intercept Kirby and recover the funds, and Danny’s incarceration becomes complicated when a clever saloon worker gets involved in an attempt to free him. The book concludes with an unrelated short story, set decades later, about a grifter trying to steal an isolated prospector’s hidden gold. Fetter’s readable style evocatively captures the story’s hardscrabble, desolate environment. Even the most loathsome characters retain some shred of humanity, as exemplified by cruel Kirby’s genuine love for his brother. However, there are some moments of awkward prose (“The young outlaw averted the salesman’s gaze”), and the book’s tendency toward lengthy exposition robs some potentially powerful moments of their impact, giving the brief narrative a disjointed and compressed quality. Characters with a notable Western twang to their speech get the best dialogue; the more buttoned-up characters come off as less realistic.
An intriguing but flawed debut Western.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9997326-0-1
Page Count: 184
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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