Customer Reviews

John H. Behan: Sacrificed Sheriff

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I truly would like to recommend "Sacrificed Sheriff" more strongly. It provides a wealth of factual information about John Behan, the Sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona, when the city of Tombstone reached its pinnacle of fame as the site of the so-called Gunfight at the OK Corral and the surrounding events. Behan's reputation, as Bob Alexander vehemently protests, has long been assailed through innuendo and an unfairly selective use of evidence, painting him as a weak and corrupt opponent of Wyatt Earp and his brothers. In Alexander, Behan has at last found a very sympathetic biographer, perhaps a biographer too sympathetic to objectively view the historical questions involved. While Alexander repeatedly (and rightly) protests the negative assumptions and interpretations of evidence used in the past against Sheriff Behan by various writers, Alexander himself falls into the same trap, seemingly never missing an opportunity to paint Wyatt Earp in the darkest colors, repeating sketchy rumors and always promoting the most negative answer to any question.

I confess a particular personal aversion to some stylistic choices made by Alexander, most notably the lavish use of italicized words and exclamation points throughout his text. Reading this, I could not help but feel that the author is displaying an unseemly indignant petulance not at all appropriate for anyone attempting an objective history. In the end, I think that Mr. Alexander has eroded the effectiveness of his own book by such devices and through a blatant display of partisanship in his unceasing attacks upon Wyatt Earp at every opportunity (extending to creating such opportunities even where the narrative text about Behan, supposedly the focus of the book, does not logically involve Earp at all). At times, Alexander seems to confuse the opinions of earlier authors of an "anti-Earp" bent with actual evidence, citing with relish almost anything unflattering ever written about the man whom popular history has chosen, instead of Sheriff Behan, to be at the center of Tombstone's story. I believe that "Sacrificed Sheriff" would have benefited greatly from a strong editor who would have toned down Mr. Alexander's all too evident antipathy towards Wyatt Earp and kept the book's focus more clearly on its supposed central subject.

Do I encourage persons interested in the controversies surrounding Tombstone in its glory days to read Alexander's book? Yes, I do. But I caution them to read it for the facts given about John Behan's life rather than for the interpretations the author makes about Behan's opponents.

Based on his "well-known" record, found in the charges against him in Tombstone, and later when he was a Federal Employee, the title could more aptly have been Johnny Behan: Scumbag. It's sales would also have been larger.

Is this book worth reading? Hardly, until you've read a lot of the other evaluations of Behan in books. He was a drukard, philanderer and crook by any standards. But likeable.

For those who say the author "bashed the Earps" do some serious, I mean serious history reading and learn something.
The Earps were no better than many of the men in the west during that time, gamblers, gold hunters, drinkers and fighters. The movies did alot to improve the image of many of these men. Sacrificed Sheriff, you bet he was, he was a man who worked just as hard as anyone in whatever job he did or office he held. Check out the Earps, James was the only one who did not get involved in any gunplay or underhanded dealings like his brothers. This is the only book on Sheriff John H. Behan that I am aware of and I believe it is work reading and having on your shelf if you are a serious western history buff.