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Murder by Impulse by D. R. Meredith

1988; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 23; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wal.1988.0156

1948-7142

Ernestine P. Sewell,

Race, History, and American Society

Reviews 247 Johnny becomes a skeptic looking for faith but unable to believe that there is hope for the sinner. Though he cannot accept the more forgiving faith of the local Catholic priest, he learns Greek and Latin from him and always carries the Greek and Roman classics in his saddlebags. Determined to become a healer, not a killer, Johnny enters college in Missouri, where he becomes friends with his cousins the Youngers and their cousins Frank and Jesse James. When Colonel Younger is bushwacked by a Yankee officer, Johnny, seeking revenge, is caught up in the tragedy of the Civil War, which “set the mark of Cain upon him.” He experiences the hysterical butchery of battle, and after the woman he loves is killed by Yankees, he takes part in the atrocities of Quantrill’s raid on Lawrence, Kansas. After the war, he has a peaceful and fulfilling interlude for six years as a schoolteacher in Texas, enjoys a subdued romance with a respectable widow and is about to marry her when he gets involved in the bloody Mason County War and returns to the violence that he thinks is an irrepressible part of his nature. The book is a saga of loneliness. Changing his name to Ringo, Johnny becomes a lost soul, drowning his sorrows in booze, finding temporary solace with prostitutes, his only friends the members of Curley Bill’s “Cowboys,” an outlaw band around Tombstone, Arizona, where Ringo becomes a deadly enemy of the Earps. While preserving his love for the classics, his chivalry towards women, his loyalty to his friends, Ringo too often expends his reckless courage in such savage violence as the Skeleton Cañón massacre, and destroys his body with whiskey and syphilis. With law and order coming to Arizona, Ringo is an anachronism, almost ready to welcome death. His last days are a via dolorosa as he is betrayed into the hands of his murderer. Confessions of Johnny Ringo is an impressive first novel that Anthony Burgess has called a masterpiece. As a study of the western outlaw, it deserves to stand beside Ron Hanson’s novels about the Daltons and Jesse James. ROBERT E. MORSBERGER California State Polytechnic University, Pomona Murder by Impulse. By D. R. Meredith. (New York: Ballantine, 1987. 273 pages, $2.95.) A Continental rams a gasoline truck. The drivers are burned beyond recognition. Traffic patrolman Larry Jenner calls their tragic deaths “just another damn fool accident.” The file is closed. The Continental had belonged to Amy Steele, wife of oil-rich rancher Jim Steele. When his hasty marriage to Christy Devereaux is headlined in the Amarillo paper, Investigator Ed Schroder, like “an ill-humored bear hunting for someone to swat,” goes into action. His procedure is unfailingly linked to the uncovering of motive. That is all. 248 Western American Literature With Schroder’s move into the affairs of the Steele family there enters family attorney John Lloyd Branson. “Exceedingly tall, thin with graying blond hair,” Branson is a man of intelligence and strong will, a man in control. He speaks in a precise, studied drawl. The story accelerates with the contest between Schroder and Branson— that is, between pre-pondered motivation as cause for murder and human nature’s propensity for impulsive action. The book, therefore, takes on a dimen­ sion not found in a typical mystery. Further, Meredith has sharpened the techniques that made the Panhandle Sheriff series uncommonly successful: humor, suspense, witty dialog, and mem­ orable characterizations. An obvious change is in her use of place. Whereas her earlier books were “cozy,” a term coined to describe a closed environment where the lore of place is stronger than the detecting procedure, Murder by Impulse places its challenge on character. As someone has said of the better mysteries, man is the puzzle. ERNESTINE P. SEWELL Commerce, Texas The Train to Estelline. By Jane Roberts Wood. (Austin: Ellen C. Temple, Publisher, 1987. 227 pages, $14.95.) The Train to Estelline, a first novel by Jane Roberts Wood, would make a great choice for an eighth grade girl in need of a book for a report due on Friday. For the adult reader, however, the book fails in...