From Publishers Weekly
Uncle Ugly's tombstone reads: "Here lies Ugly Ned Bonner, Once Alive--Now a Goner." Set in the late 1800s, this clever spoof chronicles Artemis Bonner's quest to avenge his uncle's death and to recover the treasure that rightfully belongs to his widowed aunt. As Artemis and his loyal friend Frolic trail the villain Catfish Grimes, the youth is tied to a cactus, loses an ear and almost becomes a bear's dinner. Yet when he learns that Catfish has stolen the treasure, Artemis is more determined than ever to take revenge. "When I told Frolic, he spat on the ground, which is not Sanitary but which shows that he Means Business and will go with me to do what we must do." In his amusingly histrionic narration, Artemis emphasizes, with capitals, matters most important to him--"Quick and Agile mind"; "Dear Life." Affected dialogue, authentic period touches and a few unexpected twists are inventively blended in this offbeat yarn. To Myers's readers, the Wild West will never look the same again. Ages 10-14.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From School Library Journal
Grade 7 Up-- The pointed invitation to Artemis Bonner comes from his Aunt Mary in Tombstone, Arizona: ``I have saved four hundred dollars . . .,'' she writes, ``and half of it will be yours . . . if you will Avenge your uncle's Cruel death.'' The year is 1882; and for a 15-year-old New York City sign painter, the promised bounty is irresistible. And so our hero is on the next train West. So far, so good. Even better is Artemis's own unselfconsciously humorous first-person voice that is full of outrageously inflated frontier rhetoric and colorful figures of speech. And, indeed, for its first four chapters the book is a sheer farcical delight, but then Artemis meets up with the villains, Catfish Grimes and his lady friend, and the fun starts to fade away like air leaving a leaky tire. What punctures the humorously inflated narrative tone is the sharp-edged fact that these characters are seriously trying to kill one another and that, no matter how much Artemis protests that he is a man who is fighting for justice, he is as much a potential murderer as Catfish and Lucy. Unfortunately, all of the early invention leaves the plot at about the same time, and the book degenerates into a redundant series of increasingly brutal and violent encounters, reaching a moral nadir when Artemis--as weary of the fighting as the reader is--hires an assassin to murder his antagonists for him. What little comedy remains becomes forced, vulgar, and far too reliant on toilet humor for its effect. The story limps to an improbable conclusion (despite a lot of heavy-handed foreshadowing), and readers are left to ponder, in bewilderment, what in the world went wrong with such a promising premise.
- Michael Cart, formerly at Beverly Hills Public Library, CACopyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
