Ragtime Cowboys

April 15, 2014
In this detective story with western trappings, set in 1921 California, the well-regarded Estleman teams the famous Charles D. Siringo, real-life Pinkerton, with Dashiell Hammett in his struggling-author days. Siringo is hard on his luck, living in a rundown house near Hollywood, when Wyatt Earp taps him to find a stolen Thoroughbred. The trail leads Siringo to Hammett and then leads them both to Jack London's old digs north of San Francisco. The horse theft is solved, but a larger mystery unfolds, involving the rum-runner Joseph Kennedy, already with ambitions for a son to become president, several sleazy operators who may be riffs on characters Hammett had yet to invent, and the emerging Teapot Dome scandal. Some cameos from Will Rogers round out the picture. But the detective story, though entertaining enough, is almost beside the point. Siringo, a rock-hard conservative, and Hammett, an anarchist, spar endlessly, drunkenly, over subjects ranging from politics to the movies, while Estleman's knowledge of the period, and period slang, shines through. His dialogue rivals that of the late Elmore Leonard.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)