The Bastard Boys of Montezuma by Jaromy Henry

Rife with wisecracks, Cash provides light-hearted commentary and narrative due to his photographic memory, ten-dollar words and superstitious interpretations of six crows on a dead branch and a black death-bird feather in his hat. Told in the first person, aw-shucks lingo of Lightning Flash Cash, the narrative lurches from gunfight to gunfight through the gambling halls and brothels of Montezuma, Dodge City, Tombstone and more, including Sister Mary Catherine’s Inn and whore house. Saddle up for the ride of your life through the Old West with Cash Holliday and Marshall Earp, fast friends with quick draws and a shared past of tall tales. There’s only one reason for a cowpoke to read The Bastard Boys of Montezuma – it’s more fun than playin’ with the toys God gave you. I’m not sure if it is quite up to Zane Grey’s “Riders of the Purple Sage” but it certainly qualifies for action, intriguing characters and plot. Overall, if you like novels in the western genre, then this book is certainly worth a look. But then fighting outlaws or the attempts to save a threatened female character provided a required balance of sorts. There were the occasional slow sections in the tale when Cash became quite eloquent in his long discourse, either to the reader, or another character, to explain events. Cash and Marshall Earp (yes, that is his name in the novel) encounter a few people from history that the reader would probably have heard about, even in the UK such as the Pinkerton Detective Agency and Butch Cassidy along with his expected sidekick. However, it has to be acknowledged that this is a very exciting story with plenty of the expected gunfights. For me the story could have been more “gritty” in its dialogue. The author may have intended it that way in the plot, or the targeted readers maybe include young readers as well as adults. Admittedly the heroes seem to be a lot more articulate in their speech and often eager to express themselves as lucid and educated but it felt at odds with their situation. I felt sure that more vernacular, maybe bad, language would have been common in those times and settings. At the start of the story and at later points I found some of the language and terms used to be a bit too contemporary, even tame at times. The main characters are quite well drawn and so are some of the less desirable individuals they meet along the way in their adventurous quest. They have a detective agency in a tough town with the story being told by Cash Holliday who is equally proficient with a six gun as his father was reputed to be.

Set in 1896 this western has an interesting theme with the two main characters as the mature progeny of Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp.

The Bastard Boys of Montezuma by Jaromy Henry