So, I'm looking over a new collection of short stories edited by Ed Gorman, Dave Zeltserman and Martin H. Greenberg called On Dangerous Ground: Stories of Western Noir and I got a little shiver of nerdy excitement just reading the title. Yeah, western noir. I love it. Come to think of it, I always have. Those two fictional flavors go together like... flavors that y'know go together really, really well.
Just in case this appeals to you, I've put together a list of some of my favorite examples of the western noir (and no, I'm not gonna be strict in my definitions of either genre - deal with it):
Tom Franklin actually has two wildly different entries in this category and if you enjoyed his latest Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, do yourself a favor and check out his earlier books Hell at the Breech - about a town living under the constant threat of violence from a masked vigilante gang who seek vengeance for a political murder - and Smonk - about an outlandish outlaw named Eugene Oregon Smonk and a young prostitute named Evangeline who leave separate, but equally bloody paths along the Gulf Coast eventually converging, (with the posses pursuing each in tow), in the most bizarre small town you've ever heard described. The former is as ruggedly beautiful as the latter is enthusiastically debauched.
Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone worked as both a modern day western and a detective novel though it was neither, but his Woe to Live On is set in the ravaged Missouri countryside amid the bushwhacking worst of the American Civil War, and is one of his best books, (out of print presently - if you find it used, snatch it up quick - otherwise check out Ang Lee's restored director's cut of his film based on the book Ride With the Devil). A teenager named Jake Rodell takes up with a rag-tag militia in the wake of a massacre committed by and perpetrated against neighbors of his. As the war and the raids he fights in escalate and the motives of the soldiers divulge wildly, classic themes of both genres are explored in raw and unflinching scenes of violence and grace.
Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian is about the darkest western I've ever read. It's a fever dream of blood and brimstone I'd recommend to fans of the either genre without a moment's hesitation, but it's his almost modern day western No Country for Old Men that (slightly) restores some of the pulpy cowboy thrills of the cross desert chase and shoot outs and I'm more likely to re-read. (And if the modern day western is your thing, check out Pike by Benjamin Whitmer and The Terror of Living by Urban Waite.)
Sam Peckinpah made so many films worthy of including here, but his screenwriter for Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid Rudolf Wurlitzer wrote one of my favorite novels in this vein too, The Drop Edge of Yonder. It follows mountain man Zebulon Shook on a hallucinatory quest for redemption with plenty of side trips into murder, whoring and cheating at cards.
The mass-murdering Bender family of late nineteenth century Kansas are the factual basis for the fictional escapades of Bill Ogden, an educated man stuck in a nowhere town set to become boom-town in Scott Phillips' Cottonwood. This raunchy mix of sex, violence and frontier shenanigans introduced me to one of the most intriguing "unsolved" crimes of the wild west. For a good, quick take on them, I also highly recommend Rick Geary's Saga of the Bloody Benders.
Now I've picked up The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt to meet my mood. Likin it so far.
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
