The
Gun Man Jackson Swagger, by Stephen Hunter.
Drought reigns supreme at the Callahan ranch in 1890s Arizona. The unremitting mercilessness of the weather,
the lack of water and the backbreaking work of attempting to build another rail
link to Los Angeles is taking its toll on the workers – always a transient
population but even more fly-by-night than usual as they are conquered by the
heat and dust, and the lack of female company. Of course, there are always the
whores, kidnapped or sold across the border from Mexico by their starving
families. It’s hard to know who is more
unhappy – the whores or their customers;
at any rate it’s clear that no-one is
having a good time.
Into this Ranch of the damned appears an elderly
stranger, looking for work. He’s a
patient man, prepared to wait as long as
they make him to demonstrate his extraordinary skills with any firearm for his
talents are singular and deadly. He is
the Gun Man Jackson Swagger; he’s broke, had to pawn his guns and hopes
that Mr Callahan can use his
considerable aptitude to his
advantage. And Mr Callahan does –
as any thinking man would: this Gun Man
has knowledge of weaponry that most men only fantasize about.
Jackson Swagger is given a job and keep. The only thing he objects to is that he will
be part of a gang of men who are separately accommodated because they are bullies,
threatening – and carrying out their threats – so that the Callahan Ranch has a
just reputation for putting its money where its mouth is. Still, when one is on the bones of his
posterior, there is not a lot of choice in the matter: Jackson will do what he must.
And that involves playing the long game, for Jackson has
a plan involving vengeance: he has a lot
of people to pay back for a crime committed several years before, and a very
long memory. And because of his genetic
talents with firearms he engineers access to the first machine guns in the
country – stolen from the Mexicans. Of
course. Yes, Revenge is a dish that
people of taste prefer to eat cold, and Jackson is no exception.
Pulitzer-Prize winning writer Stephen Hunter has
produced a novel and a protagonist that
are singular indeed; in elegant prose he
details crimes of great savagery, and times when men sank low enough in their
behaviour to justify them – until the Honourable Gun Man Jackson Swagger came
to the Callahan ranch and set his plan in motion. SIX STARS.
No comments:
Post a Comment