Ten Must-Read Crime Books Set in the American West
“The conventional Western,” writes novelist in a 1961 essay, “involves an elemental conflict between the personified forces of Good and Evil”: Cowboy v. Cattle Rustler, for instance, or Cowboy v. Indian. In the “Marshal v. Bank Robber” variation on the formula described above, the Law Man acts as the unflinching, unbending champion of morality and the rule of law, as shiny as the star on his shirtfront. But in recent and not-so-recent visions of the West, the Law figures clumsily, impotently, and sometimes corruptly, as just one more force in a great and teeming chaos. This list of must-read crime titles forms part of a lesser-known West, a deeply and awesomely weird landscape in which the line between Good and Evil
