Shadow of a Star

This is a coming of age story of Jim-Bob McClain, Sheriff Mont Naylor's young deputy. Elmer Kelton does an excellent job in depicting what it might be like to be a young in-experienced man placed into such a demanding position as a law officer, such as when his trouble to clear the saloon of a couple of drunks and the Sheriff has to lend a hand; but later Jim-Bob is determined to face three killers alone.....Good book! by one of the top writers of western fiction, Elmer Kelton.

Elmer Kelton is -at the time i write this review-a 7 times winner of the Spur award for Western writing and won the 2000 poll held by the Western writers of America as the best Westrn writer of them all .I endorse their support for Mr Kelton with one nit picking exception -for me he does not write formulary Westerns thesed days but rather authors novels set in the West The title under consideration is a prentice early work but shows the mature master in waiting The protagonist is a young and eager Deputy Sheriff ,Jim-Bob Meehan ;he is still wet behind the ears but willing to learn .His inexperience results in what should have been a simple arest going badly wrong and the culprit is killed .Kelton lifts this scene above the routine by showing us the deep grief of the victim's intellctually challenged wife ,this making the incident resonate with more emotion than most other genre writers would have injected into the scene . Jim -Bob is entrusted with the task of delivering horses to a ranch for breaking where he encounters a group of men who are -unknown to him ,outlaws.After parting company with Jim -Bob one of the gang -its only truly bad lot ,the vicious Buster ,kills Jim -Bob's best friend .With the sheriff out of action it is Jim-Bob who must tack down Buster and not only bring him back to town but prevent his lynching by the vengeful townsfolk Along the way he learns some lessons in life and love including how to distinguish between shallow and beautiful women whose main quality is vanity ,and those less pleasing to the eye whose love is an altogether more substantial thing ;he learns that sometimes outlaws are that way through blind fate rather than being inherently evil . There is enough vivid and well realised action to satisfy genre lovers and the underpinning theme of the need to grow up rapidly and assume moral authority adds a tart subtext to a satisfying book

I personally feel like giving Shadow of a Star a two-star rating because I felt it was cliched and formulaic; I gave it a four star rating out of fairness, because, well, I guess it was pretty naive of me to expect complexities or originality from one of these old-fashioned pulp westerns, wasn't it?A good-to-the-bone good guy and an unequivocally-bad bad guy. A wise and expendable (for tension's sake) father figure. That one sympathetic quasi-villain. Our hero's depth and inner struggle being a simple old tale of conquering his fear and doing what's right. You know the story, and if you want to read it again, buy away. But if you're looking for something a little more complex a la a nice Anthony Mann movie, you oughta know better, huh?