From Publishers Weekly
Hall's brilliant, complex take on the American western, first published in 1958, more than stands the test of time. A newly hired gun-slinging lawman, Clay Blaisedell, tries to restore order to the mythical silver mining town of Warlock, Calif. His reputation for violence serves him well during the first robbery on his watch, but his quick trigger finger, and that of deputy John Gannon, also get him in trouble. A bizarre killing spree (covertly perpetrated by Blaisedell's best friend, a murky political figure named Tom Morgan) and an impending miners' strike (one that allows gang leader Abe McQuown to mount a charge against Blaisedell and Gannon) set up the inevitable final, blazing set of confrontations. Hall, who has written more than 20 novels, taps into the mythic essence of the Wild West with a potent combination of dense but fast-moving prose; a colorful cast of violent, corrupt characters; and a diabolical, ethically neutral worldview. His prosaic tracking of the town's violently shifting nodes of power is prescient and brings Cormac McCarthy to mind as the story unfolds. No account of the fictions of the American West can be complete without reconsidering this revelatory novel.
(Dec. 7) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Library Journal
"Not since Walter Van Tillburg Clark's The Oxbow Incident has there been a novel of the West of as high a dramatic and literary quality as this one," said LJ's reviewer, adding that "Hall writes an individual, powerful prose, and obviously is thoroughly familiar with his milieu" (LJ 9/1/58). If Westerns circulate well in your library, lasso a copy of this one.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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