AUDIO

The Last Kind Words Saloon

by Larry McMurtry
3 CDs. library ed. unabridged. 3¾ hrs. Recorded Bks. 2014. ISBN 9781490612638. $36.75; 1 MP3-CD. library ed.; Playaway digital; digital download. F
COPY ISBN
McMurtry's first novel in five years is a brief series of vignettes featuring Western favorites Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp as well as characters such as Buffalo Bill Cody and Nellie Courtright from McMurtry's Telegraph Days. Legendary events, including the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, are packed in as well but are described as semicomic nonevents, not epic showdowns. This funny novel does include a good deal of ribald humor, but those seeking the genre's typical plotty action will come up short. The audio treatment is excellent, and narrator Tom Stechschulte has one of the best voices for Westerns. His cadences and lilts breathe life into the otherwise flat characters.
VERDICT Recommended to McMurty or Earp and Holliday completists, or those looking for a quick taste of McMurtry's distinctive prose. ["By turns droll, stark, wry, or raunchy, this peripatetic novel is a bit sketchy at times," read the review of the Liveright: Norton hc, LJ 2/15/14.]
Reviewed by Mark John Swails, Johnson Cty. Community Coll., Overland Park, KS , Jan 01, 2015
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