Wyatt gets the Spenser treatment
Robert B
Parker is of course best known for his hard-boiled crime stories, particularly those
featuring the tough Boston private detective Spenser. But he also wrote Westerns,
notably the four Cole and Hitch stories. And very good the Westerns were too.
Robert B Parker (1932 to 2010)
Gunman’s Rhapsody (GP Putnam’s Sons, 2001), his first Western
and a standalone novel, is Parker’s contribution to the Wyatt Earp legend. It
concentrates on the Tombstone period, from November 1879 to April 1882,
including, of course, the famous shooting on Fremont Street known to history as
the gunfight at the OK Corral.
A fine contribution to the Wyatt Earp legend
For most
of the book, the account of Earp’s actions follows history rather closely, even
if much is, understandably, abbreviated or telescoped. Perhaps more weight than
warranted is given to the romance with Josephine Marcus in explaining the
conflict between the Earps on one side and Johnny Behan and the Cowboys on the
other. But there are no lurid exaggerations, as in so many Wyatt Earp tales,
and Parker’s narrative rings true.
Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp (1848 - 1929)
The
story is bracketed, though, by a prologue and an epilogue in which the author has
allowed himself some literary license. And why not? He opens with Earp standing
down Clay Allison in Dodge and he closes with – well, I don’t want to spoil
your enjoyment if you haven’t read it, so let me just say he closes with an
interpretation of the death of John Ringo that I haven’t read before.
Robert Clay Allison (1840 - 1887)
The
story of the confrontation with the famous gunman Clay Allison comes from
Stuart N Lake’s book Frontier Marshal,
supposedly based on reminiscences of Earp himself but in reality much invented
by Lake. According to Lake, Earp said that he and Bat Masterson obliged Allison
to back down when Allison was in Dodge on a mission to kill Wyatt, and Allison
left town. This is the story Parker uses to anchor his Wyatt Earp and give his
character steel and grit. In reality, it is possible that the Allison affair
never happened. Never mind. It’s a novel. As for the death of Ringo, no one
knows exactly how that happened. Films like Tombstone
have Doc Holliday shooting him but the most probable explanation is that Ringo
died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Mr. Parker is entitled to his
version, which does have a dramatic neatness.
John Peters Ringo (1850 - 1882)
The prose
style of Gunman’s Rhapsody is pure
Parker: terse, spare and economical. Much of the action is advanced in
dialogue. Wyatt comes across as a true Western hero of the hard-boiled kind,
taciturn, reserved and unflamboyant yet steely and skilled when it comes to the
crunch. Wyatt’s brothers James, Virgil, Morgan and Warren, are more in Wyatt’s shadow
but are still well enough drawn to emerge as real characters. Doc Holliday too.
It makes
an excellent read and the book is a worthy contribution to the Earpish myth.
There’s an audio version read by Ed Begley Jr. which I haven’t heard but would
probably be fun.
Ed reads
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