Warlock by Oakley Hall
After one too many shooting by cattle rustlers and outlaws in the Western town of Warlock, the townsfolk hire a gunfighter by the name of Blaisedell to keep them safe from cowboys. Pistol duels, stagecoach robberies, hangings, questions of morality, good, evil and consequence are told through varying points of view in this classic novel. Thoughtful and often violent.
4/5
Peckinpah: An Ultraviolent Romance by D. Harlan Wilson
My first non-cowboy book of the year also happens to be the weirdest. The story – as much as there is one – is about a husband, Felix Soandso, and his wife, who move to a small farming town in America - a town where people have pet pigs that they take for walks and the local strongman earns money by tearing increasingly-large things in half. Felix’s wife is killed by a band of marauders in mirrored sunglasses. The police are unable to do anything so Felix must take the law into his own hands… A very short novel, told in extremely short (like, half a page) chapters, this is a fragmented, exciting, confusing, sometimes brutal, and often funny, novella. A single sitting read.
5/5 (for being totally unique and mind-boggling)
