The Pistoleer - by James Carlos Blake (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

The award-winning author's "fearless" debut novel chronicles the life of a legendary Texas outlaw with "a ruthless sensibility . . . spare and tough" (Publishers Weekly).

Some called him a Texas hero. Some called him the Devil himself. But on one point they all agreed. While he was alive, John Wesley Hardin was the deadliest man in Texas.

A killer at fifteen, in the next few years he became skilled enough with his pistols to back down Wild Bill Hickok in the street. The law finally caught up with him when he was twenty-five. By then, he had killed as many as forty men and been shot so many times that, it was said, he carried a pound of lead in his flesh.

In jail he became a scholar, studying law books until he won himself freedom, and afterwards he tried to lead an upright life. It was not to be. By the time he was killed in 1895, Hardin was an anachronism-the last true gunfighter of the Old West.

With each chapter told from a different character's perspective, The Pistoleer is "a genuine tour-de-force" of Western historical fiction from the Los Angeles Times Book Prize-winning author of In the Rogue Blood (Rocky Mountain News).

"Astonishing." --Kirkus Reviews

"Detailed and cinematic." --Publishers Weekly

"An achievement by any standards, but as a first novel is simply astounding." --Roundup Magazine

Review Quotes

"An astonishing series of vignettes, each revealing a period of Hardin's life, each rendered honestly and in a unique, evocative voice . . . Blake's mastery of historical detail, vernacular, and idiom makes for an entertaining chronology . . . it's also a fascinating and accurate revelation of the time, place, and people who settled a frontier." -Kirkus Reviews

"Blake writes with a fearless precision and a ruthless sensibility, his prose is spare and tough, and his descriptions detailed and cinematic." --Publishers Weekly

About the Author

James Carlos Blake is the author of twelve novels, including The Rules of Wolfe, which was a finalist for the CWA Goldsboro Gold Dagger Award and was named one of the best 101 crime novels of the past decade by Booklist. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and is a recipient of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for In the Rogue Blood. He lives in Arizona.