The Last Kind Words Saloon

Tom Stechschulte and Carine Montbertrand do well in narrating this newest work from the current dean of Western writers. Stechschulte delivers the majority of the work, providing both narrative and dialogue in his rich, gravelly baritone. Montbertrand is the production's host, and at the end of the story reads an account by Nellie Courtright, which is spot-on in every way. The combination of these two voices brings to life the realities of life in the Old West as McMurtry dramatizes Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday in their sunset years. We hear an unsparing and gritty picture as the two old lawmen--and others such as Buffalo Bill and Kiowa Chief Satanta--see their world disappearing. M.T.F. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

February 10, 2014
McMurtry of Lonesome Dove fame returns to fiction (after Custer) with this uneven portrayal of the frontier friendship between Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. McMurtry is a master of colorful character development and snappy dialogue, both nicely showcased here as Wyatt and Doc meander through Texas and Colorado to Arizona, drinking, gambling, whoring, and debating whether or not they ought to shoot folks who annoy them. As these two lethal saddle pals wander the West, McMurtry introduces other real-life figures in side-plots—cattleman Charlie Goodnight; Quanah, the Comanche chief; Satanta, the Kiowa chief; and Buffalo Bill, whose adventures provide some action and humor, but add little to the Earp-Holliday story. McMurtry portrays Doc as a cuddly, funny drunk, but Wyatt is handled much differently. Here Wyatt is depicted as a moody, jealous wife beater, short-tempered and itching to pick a fight with anybody—especially Old Man Clanton and his cattle-thieving family in Tombstone, Ariz. When Wyatt stirs up a fight with the Clantons, an ambush, murder, and a challenge result in deadly powder burning at the O.K. Corral. This whole choppy story leads up to the predictable shoot-out, but McMurtry’s treatment of the Old West’s most famous gunfight is abrupt and unconvincing, taking just eight uninspired sentences to describe. This revisionist western plays loose with historical facts, and is a disappointing effort from a Pulitzer Prize–winning author.

January 1, 2015

McMurtry's first novel in five years is a brief series of vignettes featuring Western favorites Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp as well as characters such as Buffalo Bill Cody and Nellie Courtright from McMurtry's Telegraph Days. Legendary events, including the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, are packed in as well but are described as semicomic nonevents, not epic showdowns. This funny novel does include a good deal of ribald humor, but those seeking the genre's typical plotty action will come up short. The audio treatment is excellent, and narrator Tom Stechschulte has one of the best voices for Westerns. His cadences and lilts breathe life into the otherwise flat characters. VERDICT Recommended to McMurty or Earp and Holliday completists, or those looking for a quick taste of McMurtry's distinctive prose. ["By turns droll, stark, wry, or raunchy, this peripatetic novel is a bit sketchy at times," read the review of the Liveright: Norton hc, LJ 2/15/14.]--Mark John Swails, Johnson Cty. Community Coll., Overland Park, KS

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