These days, I’m always a little leery when a big name in some other genre decides to write a Western. It’s not like the old pulp and paperback days when writers moved back and forth between genres all the time. On the one hand, any very successful author who writes a Western almost has to have a genuine fondness for them. You can bet the publishers aren’t clamoring for Westerns from their big-name thriller writers. On the other hand, whether they really like Westerns or not, that doesn’t mean they’re suited to write them. Maybe that’s just a skill set they don’t have.
But if any modern-day thriller author seems cut out to write a Western, it would be Stephen Hunter, who has made a career out of writing books about laconic heroes who are capable of great violence, usually with guns. And that’s just what he’s done in THE GUN MAN JACKSON SWAGGER.
This novel goes back another generation in the Swagger family, the fictional clan that has starred in most of his novels over the years. It’s 1897, and a grizzled old cowboy who just calls himself Jack shows up at the Crazy R ranch in southern Arizona, not far from the Mexican border. The owner of the spread, Colonel Callahan, is no more honest than he has to be, and he employs a group of hired gunmen to take care of any dirty work benefiting the ranch or the railroad that’s building a line through the region. The colonel and the railroad are in cahoots, and he also has a connection with a corrupt Federale officer below the border. Once Jack demonstrates his skill at handling a rifle, the colonel hires him, but Jack’s not really looking for a job. He has another reason for coming to the Crazy R.
And you’ll figure out what that reason is pretty easily as Jack navigates through all the danger and treachery surrounding him. I mean, we know who he really is, it’s right there in the title. But it’s still very entertaining to watch him go about it, manipulating people and events to uncover the information he needs and then taking action to achieve his ends. Nobody these days writes as well about guns and gunfights as Hunter, and Jack is a very sympathetic protagonist, managing the neat trick of being mythic and realistic at the same time.
My only real complaint is that Hunter is maybe just a little too leisurely in getting where he’s going. The best way I can think of to put this is to say that THE GUN MAN JACKSON SWAGGER is probably around 70,000 words long (actually a little on the short side for a New York-published hardback by a big name), while Ben Haas would have written the exact same story at about 50,000 words. It’s easier to forgive such an ambling pace when an author writes as well as Hunter does.
I’m also not that fond of the ending, but hey, that’s just me.
I suspect this may be a one-and-done for Hunter when it comes to writing Westerns, but I could be wrong about that. I’d certainly be willing to read more if he ever decides to write them. I think he loves and respects the Western, and overall he does a very good job, with some top-notch action scenes and great dialogue. I give THE GUN MAN JACKSON SWAGGER a high recommendation. It’s available on Amazon in e-book and hardcover editions.
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