The Last Shootist

Starred review from September 15, 2014
Swarthout does a fine job with the sequel to The Shootist, his father Glendon's famous western (from which the even more famous John Wayne movie was adapted). Miles uses the last scene of his father's novel as his first scene, in which the shootist with cancer, J. B. Books, engineers his own quick death at the hands of El Paso's worst gunmen. Not quite dead, he begs young Gillom Rogers to finish the job in exchange for his fancy, hair-triggered Remington pistols. There was something lurid and troubling about the elder Swarthout's involvement of a teenager in this scheme; it was too easy and undercut Books' attempt at dying nobly. Maybe that was the point. Anyhow, Miles Swarthout stays in character with Gillom: he's an impetuous, not-entirely-honest young man who, despite everyone's best advice, is drawn to the gunfighter's life. And Books' famous guns draw gunfighters to Gillom. He says goodbye to his long-suffering mother and makes his way in various New Mexico towns, trying his hand as a bank guard and a horse thief, holing up for a while at a sort of robbers' roost high in the mountains. Along the way, Swarthout shows a deft hand with research: from El Paso's famed alligators in the fountain to the workings of copper mines. He knows firearms and locomotives, and, a rarity in westerns, writes rather well about sex. With another movie from a Glendon Swarthout novel, The Homesman, due out soon, The Last Shootist can't miss.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)