Wed 2 Sep 2009
Archived Western Review: DUSTY RICHARDS – Servant of the Law.
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western Fiction[3] Comments
DUSTY RICHARDS – Servant of the Law. St. Martin’s, paperback original; 1st printing, December 2000.
What this novel of the American Old West has is a severe case of split personality. On one side is the Coyote Kid, a born killer, a hired gun with no compunction at ending the lives of those he’s employed to eliminate.
On the other is the title character, Marshal John Wesley Michaels, as upright and square-shooting as any of the cowboy heroes whose exploits I used to follow in the Saturday movie matinees of days (long) gone by.
The Coyote Kid’s exploits are bloody and (seemingly) lovingly described in all of their gory detail. John Wesley is polite to women, kind to animals, and generally just a nice fellow to have around town. In all honesty, I imagine that most of the inhabitants of Arizona at this time of history fell somewhere in between.
Aiding the marshal, in this which may become the first of a series, is Mrs. Arnold (as he calls her), the mother of a small boy accidentally shot and killed by the Kid, and she thirsts for vengeance. A male-female team of intrepid law-enforcers? It might make for interesting reading, but for historians, I imagine it’s going to take a few hefty swallows before it goes down, if at all.
[UPDATE] 09-02-09. As it so happened, this book was actually #2 in a slightly different series, one of three books, I think, in Dusty Richards’ “Territorial Marshal” series. Here’s a description taken from Book #1, The Lawless Land (May 2000):
John Wesley Michaels is one of those marshals, and I don’t believe that he or Mrs. Arnold made another appearance. Book #3 in the series was titled Rancher’s Law, and came out in July 2001. If there were more, I don’t know about them.
Since Servant of the Law came out, Dusty Richards has also written one book in the Rodeo Riders series; four books in Ralph Compton’s Trail Drive series; two books about Herschel Baker, Sheriff of Yellowstone County; and five or so standalone westerns.
From the looks of things, it looks like he’s doing a yeoman’s job in upholding the traditions of what I think of as the old-fashioned western. Even if I wasn’t as enthusiastic as I might have been for Servant of the Law, I think I should have been reading more of his work all along.
September 2nd, 2009 at 9:45 pm
It’s somehow comforting to know someone is still writing these formula westerns even if they do have the historical accuracy of an episode of F Troop. Once in a while you want the fantasy, not the reality.
Probably a coincidence, but Dusty “Rivers” was the name of Gary Cooper’s Texas Ranger character in de Mille’s North West Mounted Police.
September 4th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
I’m not sure about this, so I didn’t mention it before, but I think I wrote this review for the Historical Novel Society.
If so, that would explain my comment about historians finding the events in this book hard to swallow.
Personally, even if they’re not realistic, I still like the traditional, old-fashioned westerns — the kind that appeared in books and the better pulp magazines, not the singing cowboy movies, nor F TROOP either, for that matter (and SERVANT OF THE LAW falls nowhere either of those two levels.)
My own preference, and I don’t mind letting it show.
— Steve
September 4th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
I only used F Troop as an obvious example of total unreality in the western setting. Most western films aren’t particularly realistic, but then neither are most thrillers. But like you I like some of the cliches of these “non historical” westerns — and to be fair many a “historically accurate” writer plays fast and loose with the truth.
Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove books take historical license to extremes including having Judge Roy Bean murdered by a virtual serial killer, killing off Big Foot Wallace, having the Texas Rangers defeated in a battle they actually won against impossible odds, and a Comanche raid on Austin, the capital, that never happened. Just because you do your research doesn’t mean you are bound by it.
Frabkly I’d just as soon have the fantasy as McMurtry deconstructing history because the truth is too heroic for his tastes. As often as not the most “realistic” seeming stories are utter bunk.
Save for the musical numbers Paint Your Wagon is closer to the reality of life in a mining camp than Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and while I loved Deadwood on HBO the set was larger than the real town. The wild and wooly Tombstone was closer to the historical truth than Kevin Costner’s angst ridden and pretentious Wyatt Earp.
Sometimes the reality is simply too hard to believe. The first of the great western lawmen, Joseph Walker, was something like 6’9″ and handsome as an actor. Imagine trying to sell that as a realistic movie or book. Commodore Perry Owen (that was his name, not a title or rank) once cleaned up an entire county in New Mexico in under fifteen minutes. The problem with history is it insists on being about what happened and not what seems plausible.
So I don’t worry about the realism in westerns too much. If it’s fun I enjoy it, and if not I don’t watch it, but any historian will tell you some of the most absurd nonsense was true. There was a British adventurer and secret agent in the 19th century born without arms or legs. Try to do that in a novel or movie.