1996; 205 pages. Book 1 (out of 2) in the “Buck and Dobie” series. New Author? : Yes. Genres : Classic Western; Crime Fiction. Overall Rating : 8*/10.
Meet the cowpunchers Buck Hawkins and Dobie
Garrett. Best friends. Good workers.
Loyal to whoever is willing to hire them.
Right now, they work for W.C.
Milhouse, owner of the Singletree Ranch. At the moment, they’re freezing their tushes off because winters are mighty
cold out there in the Texas panhandle, and they have to routinely go looking
for Singletree Ranch cattle that have strayed out to the wilds, in a couple feet of
snow, and are starving to death.
Alas, that’s a hopeless
task. Even the cows that haven’t strayed
away are dying from a lack of food at the Singletree Ranch. W.C. Milhouse is in financial trouble.
Buck and Dobie are worried that he's going to be forced to lay
them off.
I’ve got news for you
two. You’re about to find yourselves in
a heap more trouble than that!
What’s To Like...
Unwanted: Dead or
Alive is written in what I’d call “classical western” style that you find in novels by Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour. But Gene Shelton infuses it with a bunch of wittiness
which gives the story a more lighthearted tone.
The text, especially the dialogue, is written in “Texas cowboy drawl”, which fits nicely into
the book’s tone without ever getting tedious.
I was impressed.
Dobie and Buck quickly find
themselves out of work and framed for crimes punishable by hanging. Since they’re being accused of being outlaws (or “owlhoots” in cowboy vernacular), our pair
of heroes decide they might as well become desperados to make ends meet. After all, how hard can it be to poke a gun
at a store owner or a bank teller and tell them to “hand
over the cash!”
I enjoyed it that most of the story is set in the Texas Panhandle.
The company I worked for had three chemical plants in that area,
including one on the Canadian River, which gets mentioned frequently in Unwanted:
Dead or Alive. The two towns cited
here, Mobeetie and Jacksboro,
are real places, but I'd never heard of them. I spent my time in Dumas and Borger.
There’s lots of action and plenty of clever dialogue, but things never descend into outright silliness. Despite a scarcity of ill-gotten money, Buck
and Dobie’s reputation as murderous robbers grows rapidly. So does the bounty on their heads. They eventually take on a third partner (revealed in the Amazon blurb) who,
despite also having no experience as an owlhoot, helps them nicely learn
the trade.
The ending is both
over-the-top and heartwarming. Everyone
gets their just desserts and our protagonists ride off into the sunset, although I
wouldn’t say that they live happily ever after.
There is a sequel, but that’s as far as things go, series-wise.
Excerpts...
The wind had eased a bit.
“I’ll be glad to get back home,” Hawkins
said. “Hope the boss has got that old
potbellied stove fired up. Can’t tell
where my toes are.”
“You’ll find ‘em. When you pull off your boots and socks,
they’ll drop off on the floor. String
‘em up on a rawhide thong and they’ll make a right nice necklace for some gal.” Garrett spat again and wiped a gloved hand
across the dense stubble on his chin.
“Ain’t toes I’m fretted over losin’.
I’m gonna have to pee sometime before August.” (pg. 99)
Buck
said, “How did you find out so much about him?”
Marylou’s slight smile held a slightly
wicked touch. “Women have certain
advantages over men when it comes to gathering information.”
Hawkins’s heart sank. “Marylou, you—you didn’t—”
“Sleep with him? Hell, no.
I just let him sneak a few peeks down the front of my dress. Get a man’s eyes busy and his brain locks
up.” (pg. 148)
Kindle Details…
Unwanted:
Dead or Alive presently is free at Amazon. The sequel, How
the West Was Lost, is priced at $4.99. Gene Shelton has another dozen or so e-books
at Amazon, most of
which are Westerns, none of which I’ve read.
They are in the $2.99-$7.99 price range.
Kewlest New Word ...
Swamper (n.) : a general assistant; a handyman;
helper
Ratings…
Amazon: 4.2*/5, based on 3,783 ratings
and 695 reviews.
Goodreads: 4.05*/5,
based on 1,458
ratings and 112 reviews.
“Grabbin’ a wildcat
by the hind leg ain’t the hard part.
Turnin’ loose is where it gets chancy.”
(pg. 160)
There’s a moderate amount off profanity
in Unwanted: Dead or Alive; I counted 15
instances in the first 10%, about evenly split between “damn” and “hell”. Once or twice, adult situations are hinted at, but there’s nothing R-rated about it. See the second excerpt, above, for an example of this.
There were only a pair of typos, and both were punctuation errors: two persons speaking in
a single paragraph; and a period
where a comma should be.
Kudos to whoever did the editing.
There were also a half dozen weird links (labeled “wes1” through “wes6”)
that linked to what appeared to be some sort of editing notes. I suspect the blame for those falls on the
formatters, and that they will be deleted in future e-book editions of this.
I had some difficulty keeping
track of which horses belonged to which outlaws, but that cleared up once I
realized that several of the characters used two horses, one for riding,
the other for carrying supplies. See the
cover image above.
That’s all I can quibble
about. For me, Unwanted: Dead or
Alive was an interesting tweak of the classic western novel, which is not a genre I read very often. So if you are
tired of the same old formula used in writing oaters, you'll probably find this a
refreshing alternative.
8 Stars. One last quibble. The rabbit dies.
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