The Lawmen

Next after the cowboy, the frontier lawman is probably *the* iconic figure of Western fiction. This anthology, the first volume in Greenberg and Pronzini's Best of the West series, shows why. In their introduction, the editors explain that their purpose in creating the series was to make available to present-day readers some of the excellent short Western fiction published chiefly in magazines and no longer available as classic novels are. The authors they've chosen here exemplify "quality" Western writing, with selections by Stephen Crane, Ernest Haycox, Frank Gruber, Steve Frazee, Talmage Powell, Edward D. Hoch, Tom W. Blackburn, Theodore Sturgeon, Thomas Thompson, Brian Garfield, Donald Hamilton, Bill Pronzini, and Wayne D. Overholser, plus a poem by S. Omar Barker. In these pages you'll find the classic "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky," showing how very deeply even badmen respected "decent" women in those long-gone days; "McQuestion Rides," in which a veteran lawman twists the truth a bit to get his man and save a young woman's future; "The Marshal of Broken Lance," in which the classic motif of the lone lawman standing against troublemaking trail hands gets a new twist; "The Bounty Killers," in which a young man learns some hard truths about guilt, redemption, and partnership; "Star for a Warrior," in which a lawman learns just how much his town respects him; "The Graveyard on the Hill," an O. Henry-esque short; "Epitaph," the story of a lawman's complex and deadly plot to finish cleaning up his town; "The Sheriff of Chayute," in which the eponymous sheriff faces a figure from his cowhand past; "Gun Job," a tale of a marshal who tries to give up his badge and gun for his bride, and what happens when he does; "Peace Officer," the story of a Texas Ranger, a small-town sheriff, two outlaws and a girl; "The Guns of William Longley," about a young man who stands on the cusp of badman-hood and how he makes his choice; "The Hanging Man," a murder mystery set in a quiet small town in the 1890's; and "They Hanged Wild Bill Murphy," a range-war story complicated by jealousy and old vengeance. Every one of these stories is tight and well-crafted, and all are by true masters of prose, with many a notable phrase. Like all the rest of the series, it's a volume not to miss if you love Westerns.