Reviewed May 15, 2004
Since this is the prequel to Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize winning "Lonesome Dove," I opened it with pleasurable anticipation. I was not disappointed. It's an engrossing tale and for all of us who grew fond of Gus Macrae and Woodrow Call in "Lonesome Dove" it is nice to spend some more time with them.
What happens in this book? Here we see our young heroes in their first adventures with the Texas Rangers. They set off on two abortive missions into territory disputed by Mexicans, Comanches and Texans, both of which end in a shambles with the accompanying assortment of characters meeting their gruesome ends in the usual inventive McMurtry fashion. The characters are interesting, the action is fast and the dialogues are terse and entertaining. On both missions the Texas Rangers are confronted by an invincible Comanche named Buffalo Hump and two other only slightly less threatening enemies known as Gomez and Kicking Horse. These three slash and burn their way through most of the lesser characters in the book without ever sustaining any real damage themselves.
This book disappointed me a little in that McMurtry, having broken the mold of the classic western format, appears to be stuck in a format of his own creating. You take your heroes and add a remuda of idiosyncratic characters, send them all off on a wild goose chase into the wilderness, kill off most of the supporting cast, and return the heroes to where they began. In "Dead Man's Walk" it seems as though McMurtry started off with his troupe and then found he had killed nearly all of them off within the first 80 pages, so he had to go back to square one and gather a new and much larger company. This he does and takes the rest of the book to extinguish them as interestingly as usual. "The Berrybender Trilogy" by the same author is another example of this narrative structure.
In "Dead Man's Walk" we stagger bloodily towards the conclusion, wondering how Gus and Call are going to escape what appears to be certain doom and here is where the book is weakest. Their lives are ultimately spared through mere chance. It is rather more satisfying for a reader if heroes influence their fates at least a little. And their return to the safety of Galveston after their salvation is a surrealistic concoction that depends solely on newly introduced characters who pop up conveniently after the last few disposable members of the cast have been exterminated. There's lots of story in "Dead Man's Walk," but not much plot. McMurtry, however, spins his tale so well that "Dead Man's Walk" is nevertheless a good read. If you liked "Lonesome Dove" you will most certainly enjoy this.
(Review by Brian Horne - all rights reserved.)