Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780425154120
ISBN number: 0425154122
Label: Berkley
Manufacturer: Berkley
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 397
Printing Date: August 01, 1996
Publishing house: Berkley
Sale Popularity Level: 477007
Studio: Berkley
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Brief Book Summary:
Some have called him a Texas hero. Some called him the Devil himself. But on one point they all agreed: while he was alive, John Wesley Hardin was the deadliest man in Texas. A novel of uncompromising depth and power, the book recounts the wild days of Wes Hardin through the voices of those who encountered him during the forty-two years of his life. The cast is as raw and uncompromising as the writing. The Pistoleer is James Carlos Blake's fascinating debut novel. Blake uses the raw clay of historical fact and weaves a fascinating tale of the Old West.
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Rated by buyers 
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Probably the toughest gangster in the old west. Killed more folks than
most and was finally shot down from the rear..just like Wild Bill. In later life, he was an attorney and wrote this book about his life. It is not often you get to get a book written by the gangster that lived he legend.
Rated by buyers -
This was some book ! Absolutely outstanding in every respect - as a story, in its style, very exciting, excellent dialect, really funny in spots, ..... Chapter by chapter I went from hating the arrogant ... (John Wesley Hardin), to wanting to be a Hardin. If he really was as portrayed in this book (which I doubt), he was mostly the kind of person I respect - leave him alone and he'll buy you drinks all night long and otherwise give you the shirt off his back. Meddle in his business, get in his face, or harm his family and he'll whip you or kill you. Now don't get me wrong. Any reader would try to see where they fit in, in that day and time and I am pretty much left with the sad conclusion that I would have probably been a sorry, boot-licking peddler of some kind . . . . not a Hardin.
Rated by buyers 
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This book is written in installments: first-person narratives by people who know the main character. Most of them are only a few pages long, and few of the narrators repeat. Thus, it's impossible to really sympathize with any of them. The main character himself, gunslinger John Wesley Hardin, is hard to like: we never get into his head, and from the outside he looks like just another gangster. The reader sympathizes briefly when he's wounded and imprisoned, only to be put off when he commits his subsequent act of mindless violence or drunken stupidity. The post-Civil War American West, as presented by the author, whacks the reader over the head with violence, lawlessness, and what I felt were rather gratuitous scenes of sex with prostitutes. I'm all for "gritty" historical fiction, but here it sometimes seemed like the author was just trying to show off. Without emotional content, grit is just an irritant. Having said all that, the book is intelligently written and apparently well researched, and it might be somebody else's cup of tea more than it is mine.
Rated by buyers -
There was nothing like the American West in the history of the world and figures like Hardin exemplify it; deadly, brave, sad and foolish all at once. His death seemed a relief because by 1895 there was no place left for the bravado of a gunslinger who would draw over an insult.
I found the writing format, the telling through other's eyes, less engaging and certainly less tasty than Blake's current style.
Rated by buyers -
While Blake is a premier writer, in this work he has chosen to glorify a deadly killer in a way that doesn't do history justice, but continues to perpetuate the myth of this man as hero. I live in the area of Texas where Hardin did many of his deeds, and myth already abounds here. We don't need a novelist to validate these misconceptions.
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