Fascinating Authors

Book Review
by
John H. Manhold

The Shopkeeper by James D. Best is a western with an unusual protagonist.
ISBN 9781587369223, Wheatmark, 223 pages, Paperback, $18.95

The story opens with Steve Dancy, a New Yorker, playing whist in Pickhandle Gulch, Nevada with three of the town’s more enlightened citizens. Steve’s purported reason for touring the west is to take notes to fulfill a book contract with a publisher. As the plot develops, Steve emerges as an entirely different type of individual. His reason for being in the west is true. However, instead of being the typical greenhorn writer, we discover him to be not only the former owner of a gun shop, but an individual who also is most adept at using weapons, especially a six-gun. It further is revealed that he is the son of a most prosperous father who dealt only in the finest, and most expensive of weapons, and that through his early years, the young man had parlayed the original gun shop into holdings worth thousands of dollars in numerous business enterprises…

A number of other interesting characters are introduced, and become involved. There is a very young, beautiful but enigmatic, wife of a powerful rancher, the rancher’s spiteful mother, a well-traveled, but now wealthy, owner of mines and a smelting plant, a Pinkerton Captain and his crew, and several players of note in both legitimate and corrupt monetary and political dealings. The plot moves rapidly among these monetary, political persons and action sequences in Pickhandle Gulch, Carson City, Virginia City, and some of the intervening countryside. All action precedes, and hinges upon, a gubernatorial election.

The Western Writers of America, as well as numerous other groups, constantly are discussing the need for ‘Westerns’ to be “different” if they are going to regain any of the popularity they had a few years ago. James D. Best has provided some of this difference that has been called for. Unfortunately, however, the protagonist’s reversion to the more typical western gunfighter is rather precipitous, so that the ‘different’ beginning is somewhat lost early in the story. A little ‘filling out’ of the character probably could correct some of this problem, and provide a better understanding for his spontaneous actions. This would help retain the elusive ‘difference’, at least for a time.

Nevertheless, The Shopkeeper brings a hint of the ‘difference’ that is being called for in westerns, and the story moves along at a fast pace that provides a most enjoyable few hours of relaxation. A basic cast of characters also is provided for future books that already are in progress.