Reading Sanctum: Potpourri is one of our continuing features of quick cut book reviews to help you find some otherwise innocuous books that might have escaped your attention. As a huge library/book reader geek, I love sharing stories about the books I am reading. So, if you love books like I love books, then you just might love this feature, too.
The month of June is referred to as High June by the Mustache and the Beard because we decided to use June as the month we feature the western genre like the movie High Noon. Here in Potpourri I will talk about a few books and rate them for you.
Unflinching is a post-modern, western novel, unique to the genre in disparate ways, taking advantage of the tropes that both celebrate positive and negative aspects of the western milieu. The characters in most westerns are pretty cardboard. Villains are heinous. Heroes are altruistic. Villains wear black hats. Heroes wear white hats. Villains do bad things. Heroes do good things. Except that the post-modern hero is generally anti-hero. His code is more survive at all costs, rather than the rigid adherence to law, justice, and the common good.
A United States general and his daughter arrive in a Western town when they witness a bank robbery occurring. They are thrown into a panic because they have traveled west for a new life. No sooner they arrive when they are cast into this perilous situation. The general and his daughter get separated while the general joins the fight. During the gunplay, the daughter is kidnapped.
As the villains travel through the west raping, pillaging, murdering, and enacting a campaign of mayhem, Detective Simms of the Pinkerton group is tasked to find the kidnapped young lady and put down the two rabid killers. As far as western plots go, Unflinching is much more overtly violent than the genre norm, with salacious attention to detail in particular when describing sexual encounters and graphic kills.
In addition, most westerns (when written by the masters Max Brand, Louis L’Amour, and Zane Grey) refrain from all but the most tepid expletives “Gosh!” “Darn!” “Phagh!” Here, the language is much more realistic, but also raw. I believe most readers of western fiction continue to read westerns in an attempt to yearn for an innocence lacking here. Still, interesting, innovative, but also maybe too Avant Garde. I rate this book right down the middle with 3 Grey Geeks.
I immediately fell into this novel due to its rapid pace and instantly recognizable hook. Murphy’s Law is a natural law that states that “Anything that CAN go wrong, WILL go wrong.” Here, in The Reluctant Gun Hand through various situations, that law moves the plot and demonstrates via western tropes the almost unerring path toward its conclusion.
The story takes place at a time when the Wild West is being tamed, so the initial reason why Jake has gone to jail is due to a gun battle that years before hardly would have resulted in cursory attention. He gets out of jail after a 6-month stint. To Jake, that is sufficient to cause him to re-evaluate his life and decide to go home to where a woman awaits. While enroute, he gets attacked and his horse is killed. Luckily, a cellmate has witnessed the gunplay and offers Jake an opportunity to get a new horse.
With such ease, he falls reluctantly back into the life of a gun hand, from one (no-choice) situation after another. This novel is short on the setting of mood. Most of the exposition is spent on describing the scenarios which seem to flow naturally from situation to situation, illustrating that even when a person is motivated to do the right thing, sometimes their actions are absent choice.
Although, I have never read a book by Lederer, I enjoyed the contemporary way he approaches this western. The literary giants of westerns that I admire (Brand, Grey, and L’Amour) would be big on romanticizing the vistas, or heralding the untamed spirit of the heroes through lyrical prose. Lederer opts to tell a staid almost anti-hero story that still works, but in a different way. I actually like this book a lot, but it only fails in the fact that our hero is not a traditional white hat hero. Otherwise 4 very good almost great Grey Geeks.
Well that about does it for me you lovable Geeks. I hope you have enjoyed reading about my High June selections here at the Mustache and the Beard. We might do something completely different for next June, but that entirely depends on you. Please don’t forget to hit the like button, subscribe, and comment. As always, thank you for reading my post. Stay safe, because I love all you Geeks. See you later! Take it easy! Peace!
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