But they're also hard-boiled crime stories, and why not? What is Sam Spade but a lone wolf riding into town wearing a trench coat and a fedora?
The stories portray a West more fraught with racial conflict than I expected from Westerns, and they treat sex more frankly. At the same time, there is nothing jokingly or preciously revisionist or politically correct about them; they feel like old-time Westerns.
But they feel like crime stories, too. So, while Grainger pays tribute to such Western classics as The Searchers, "Maggie's Promise" gives chilling new meaning to the line "It was a wandering daughter job."
I'll read the first collection of Laramie/Miles stories next, and I'll be thinking about Westerns that might appeal to crime-fiction readers. Any suggestions?
© Peter Rozovsky 2012