Product Description

A novel of the Old West, imagined as only Robert B. Parker can.

"He already had a history by the time he first saw her . . . he was already a figure of the dime novels, and he already half-believed in the myth of the gunman that he was creating, even as it created him."

Robert B. Parker, the undisputed dean of American crime fiction, has long been credited with single-handedly resuscitating the private-eye genre. As the creator of the Spenser, Jesse Stone, and Sunny Randall series, he has proven, again and again, that he is "Boston's peerless man of mystery" (Entertainment Weekly). Now he gives his fans the book he always longed to write-a brilliant and evocative novel set against the hardscrabble frontier life of the West, featuring Wyatt Earp.

It is the winter of 1879, and Dodge City has lost its snap. Thirty-one-year-old Wyatt Earp, assistant city marshal, loads his wife and all they own into a wagon, and goes with two of his brothers and their women to Tombstone, Arizona, land of the silver mines. There Earp becomes deputy sheriff, meeting up with the likes of Doc Holliday, Clay Allison, and Bat Masterson and encountering the love of his life, showgirl Josie Marcus. While navigating the constantly shifting alliances of a largely lawless territory, Earp finds himself embroiled in a simmering feud with Johnny Behan, which ultimately erupts in a deadly gunbattle on a dusty street.

Here is the master's take on the hallowed Western, as expertly crafted as the Spenser novels, and with the full weight of American history behind it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #164517 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-01
• Formats: Audiobook, CD
• Original language: English
• Binding: Audio CD

From Amazon.com
Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, Doc Holliday, Tombstone, the O.K. Corral--the icons are so firmly embedded in American history that we might know nothing more about them than their names. But in this spare, moody riff on the events leading to the 1881 shootout at the O.K. Corral--the signature battle defining the violence of the Old West--Robert B. Parker shades the black-and-white starkness with shifting tones of gray.

Parker moves beyond the Hollywood version of the shootout to explore the tangle of family loyalties, dirty politics, and passion that embroiled Wyatt Earp before and after his encounter with the Clanton gang. In Parker's version, the longstanding rivalry between the Earps and the cowboys may stem from cultural difference (the Clantons were ranchers who held Confederate sympathies during the Civil War; the Earps were townsfolk who had Union loyalties), and it may be exacerbated by alcohol, machismo, and fiery accusations from both sides. But the spark that leads to the final conflagration is simpler: Wyatt falls in love with Josie Marcus, Sheriff Johnny Behan's beautiful, self-assured companion.

Parker's Wyatt Earp is, like his detective hero Spenser, by turns arrogant and humble, and Earp's firm-jawed struggles with honor, family, and love will feel familiar to fans of that long-running series. But the author has abandoned the series' relatively intricate plotting and its touches of goofy humor. The novel is a curious amalgamation of inexorably linear narrative and moments of static contemplation. It drifts like a tumbleweed through Tombstone, leaving two- and three-month gaps, pausing briefly to dip into moments of conflict and moments of peace.

Gunman's Rhapsody is not a big, sprawling western. Hewing firmly to an understated minimalism, it seems at times to have sprung from a collaboration between Hemingway and a Quaker council. Who would have thought that such an unlikely combination could be so rewarding? --Kelly Flynn

From Publishers Weekly
The gunman is Wyatt Earp. The rhapsody plays out in a rare Parker stand-alone novel, his best yet and his first western. Told in prose as cool and spare as Parker has ever laid down, the book details the time Wyatt and his brothers spend in Tombstone, culminating in the shootout at the O.K. Corral. Parker's Wyatt won't surprise those familiar with the author's Boston PI, Spenser, and with Spenser's sidekick, Hawk. This Wyatt Earp carries traits of both Spenser's adherence to code, his word, himself, and Hawk's indifference to violence and death. But Wyatt is even more of a distillation than either Spenser or Hawk. He's the essence of the self-contained gunman; as he walks to the O.K., "he could feel the steady rhythm of his pulse, the easy flow of his blood." Events span years, but move quickly. Conflict arises when Wyatt falls hard for beautiful showgirl Josie Marcus and she for him, for she's the lover of local politico Johnny Behan. Johnny's jealousy leads to conspiracy, acts of cowardice and finally to the shoot-out. All the western legends associated with Wyatt play their parts the other Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson, Clay Allison, John Ringo and Parker etches each in granite. "Are you ready to die today?" Doc asks a man who's insulted him. Occasionally, Parker intersperses the drama with reports (letters, news bulletins, notices) that add historical context though not much more; their inclusion is questionable. What's not is how, as events move toward their necessary conclusion, the narrative takes on the inexorability of classic tragedy. This is a remarkably artful western, as tough and as true as the slap of gunmetal against leather. (June)Forecast: Parker's name on the cover and strong reviews could push this western onto bestseller lists, but it won't sell quite as well as the Spenser titles, with their vast built-in readership.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Parker heads west to meet Wyatt Earp.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

A Good, Quick Read
I decided to read this book after having glanced at a couple of pages. I don't know Parker's other works and this is the first Western genre novel that I've read. In short, it's a good read and Parker does a good job of portraying the characters in a realistic manner rather than the overblown "larger than life" characters in other books. The simple style matches the much simpler time where the story is set. And Parker does a good job of matching the story to the actual history, at least as much as we really know about it.

I disagree with SWH (above) about not pursuing the Doc/Wyatt relationship. He (Wyatt) is pretty clear that the only thing that joins them is loyalty based on common experience. For this novel, that suffices.

About the only question I was left asking was why Bat Masterson appeared in it at all. His re-appearance mid-story doesn't add anything and is about the only uneven thing in the book.

Overall...a good day at the beach/park/on the plane read.

A Familiar Tale Retold with Manly Panache
I like western movies but have never been big on the novels. Can't say why. Who knows why we like some things but not others? Nevertheless, I've recently become interested in reading western fiction, probably because of the work of Larry McMurtry. (I was bowled over by his Lonesome Dove and liked some of the others in that series, which followed it.) And so I picked up Parker's Gunman's Rhapsody as soon as I saw it.

It was not only a western, it was about one of the quintessential western legends: the now mythic feud between the Earp brothers and the Clantons and McClaury's in 1880's Tombstone, Arizona. And so this was more than just a "shoot 'em up", to me, it was real history, based on actual historical records and the recollections of many of those who were there. (Josie Marcus, Wyatt's paramour, actually wrote . . . or dicated . . . her own record of these events toward the end of her life.)

Parker's writing in this novel is tight and sharp. The characters are limned in subtle but clean strokes, through taut description and even tauter dialogue. The Wyatt Earp of this novel is not the goody-two-shoes lawman he's sometimes portrayed as. Indeed, he's not above gunning a man down in cold blood though, as he tells his high-strung buddy, Doc Holliday, after one such event, the difference between Holliday and him is that Doc'll shoot a man over a spilled drink whereas Wyatt, even when stepping outside the law, demands good cause. So, if he's a killer, at least he doesn't kill lightly is what he seems to be saying. And that's enough for the Wyatt of this tale, a man of supreme self assurance, unmoved by the need for approval, appreciation or the good opinion of others that seems to drive lesser men.

Parker's tale pretty much captures the story as it has come down to us. If you've seen the movie Tombstone, you already know most of it, although here the "evil axis" of the cowboys (Curly Bill, Johnny Ringo, Ike Clanton, etc.) is not blown up into some kind of metaphysical thing, as the movie has it. And the basic series of events that unfold reflect less a mythic confrontation between good and evil than they do Wyatt's decision to pursue Josie Marcus and the subsequent anger and humiliation this causes Johnny Behan, Josie's discarded lover. In this novel, Behan is the real force behind the events, a weasel of a man who stirs up trouble from the shadows, while the cowboys seem to have been clumsily caught in the middle. Other differences with the film, Tombstone, include the handling of Doc Holliday who is rather thinly drawn here and does not rise to the dimensions Val Kilmer gave him in the movie. The end's a bit different too, more off-handed than the overblown dramatic scenes of Tombstone, the movie, and, because of this, somewhat less affecting.

In fact I wished there had been more dimension to the rather familiar cast of characters, even if they were not the Tombstone personalities so vividly brought to life on the big screen. But on balance I liked this tale and thought it offered a very-down-to-earth look at the events leading up to, and following, the infamous gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

On the other hand, I didn't much like the interpsersed news items which were mainly distracting, not informative . . . and I missed the mythic interplay between Wyatt and Doc, whether THAT ever really was the case or not. (Surely, given the different life trajectories of these two men, and their very different temperaments, there must have been something that cemented their friendship. But we don't get a real sense of that here.) Bat Masterson's appearance, too, seemed gratuitous and rather too fleeting.

But, in sum, this was a nicely told tale. I admired Parker's clean prose and his ability to say so much with dialogue. A good western, though not up to a great one like Lonesome Dove.

SWM

Spenser at the (just OK) Corral
Critics loved it & all in all it's an ok read. Basically it's Spenser in the old West. Parker focuses on too few aspects of Wyatt Earp's life w/too much existential angst.All in all it's a good entertaing read. It's a sentimental favorite because it drove me to read the true western writers ( Braun, Keltner, Johnston, & L'Amour).
Not (IMOO) worth full price.