Warlock

‘One of our best American novels’ Thomas Pynchon

A renowned gunslinger tries to impose law and order in an anarchic frontier boomtown, in this masterly Western

The taste and smell of Warlock was not merely that of its dust, but the taste of apprehension, the smell of fear and anger like a dangerous animal snarling and stinking in its cage . . .

In the dust-soaked, lawless town of Warlock, chaos reigns. After a band of local cowboys led by the cut-throat Abe McQuown chases the deputy sheriff out of town, the local citizens decide to take action. Enter famed Texan gunslinger Clay Blaisedell, hired to restore the peace and see off the outlaws, from San Pablo in the valley to the distant peaks of the Dinosaur Mountains. But in the heat-haze of the town, allegiances shift and justice blurs with vengeance. As a strike in the local silver mines reaches fever pitch, each man and woman must face the horrors of the past, and confront an uncertain future.

Inspired by true events surrounding the infamous gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, Warlock blazed a trail for the modern Western. A finalist for the 1958 Pulitzer Prize, it offers a scathing deconstruction of the myth of America and the duel between order and anarchy.