Customer Reviews

Kelly and the Three-Toed Horse

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The West of Bowen's Yellowstone Kelly is an odd mix of brutal violence and laugh out loud humor. This combination can occasionally work well; some authors have a knack for combining these two things into a fascinating work, but the balance is off here. There are outrageous events to be sure, battling paleontologists, a drunken blowhard of a Buffalo Bill, and of course that staple of western fiction, the Arabian prince and his harem. With this set up there are bound to be a few good laughs, but strewn throughout are also vicious killings that become discordant after awhile, not so much moving the plot along, rather they seem to be there to remind the reader that the West was a brutal place. It just doesn't mesh together well, and for me it was just too much of a bad thing spoiling a decent number of good laughs.

While I thoroughly enjoy the Montana Mysteries, Kelly in all of his personas is a little over the top in both his politics and his attitudes. I think too much time is spent by Bowen on revisionist history and not enough time developing a likable character and reasonable plot lines to accompany him. All that aside, once one suspends belief and buys into an alternate universe theory of U.S. history, the book offers some rollicking good times and funny scenarios punctuated by action and gore.Kelly and the Three Toed Horse: A Novel Featuring Yellowstone Kelly, Gentleman and ScoutThe Tumbler (Montana Mysteries Featuring Gabriel Du Pre)

Outrageous humor, a marvelous narrative voice: only the linguistically challenged or excessively straitlaced would hesitate about this book. Yes, the graphic and gruesome tortures and casual deaths are disturbing, but their outrageousness is in keeping with the fantastic tone of the book, which signals that nothing is to be taken too seriously or realistically. That said, however, the casual murders by frontiersmen supposingly upholding a code,the horrifying deaths perpetrated by Indians and the less sensational but equally horrifying treatment of the native Americans by the settlers and the government serve a real function in the novel, reminding us that much about the frontier West was brutal and not funny at all. By creating this balance between the humorous and the horrific Peter Bowen both entertains us hugely and offers an instructive underlying moral commentary. This is my first exposure to his writing, and I'm mightily impressed.