The Book of Murdock (21 page)

Authors: Loren D. Estleman

BOOK: The Book of Murdock

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The Word Out West

The motif of the gun-toting preacher is nothing new in the literature and cinema of the American frontier. Oxymoronic though he may seem, the figure of the white-collared man in black with Scripture in hand and a revolver on his hip recurs frequently in the tapestry of the New World's answer to the mythos of Greece and Rome, and he has a historical foundation. The author is pleased to provide an incomplete checklist of those works that have celebrated him:

Barton, Barbara.
Pistol Packin' Preachers: Circuit Riders of Texas
. Lanham, Maryland: A Republic of Texas Press Book, Taylor Trade Publishing, 2005.

Barton's account, with a foreword by the great Western novelist Elmer Kelton, provides an eminently readable history of itinerant preaching in our most western state, with anecdotes both harrowing and rollicking about the struggle to bring Christianity to the wilderness. An entertaining piece
of cocktail-party conversation appears wherever the book falls open.

Phares, Ross.
Bible in Pocket, Gun in Hand: The Story of Frontier Religion
. Lincoln, Nebraska: Bison Books, The University of Nebraska Press, 1971.

First published in 1964, Phares' volume roams over the broader territory of the frontier, with a strong emphasis on the raw humor of ecclesiastical doings on the border of civilization. This is a book to pick up and read at random whenever the reader needs a lift.

Five Card Stud
. Directed by Henry Hathaway, starring Dean Martin, Robert Mitchum, Inger Stevens, Roddy McDowall, and Katherine Justice. 1968.

A good old oater of a Western movie, this old-fashioned whodunit set against a backdrop of desert and plain pits gambler Martin, in vintage Rat Pack persona, against Mitchum's quick-on-the-draw minister with a private agenda. Critic Leonard Maltin calls it “probably Hathaway's worst Western,” but that hollowed-out Bible with a pocket pistol concealed inside is worth the price of the rental. Shallow, but enormously entertaining.

The Gun and the Pulpit.
Starring Marjoe Gortner.

Production details on this 1970s made-for-TV movie are nearly nonexistent, but Gortner, famous for a short time as a child evangelist, made an impression in an even shorter acting career as a gunfighter posing as a preacher. The film resurfaces occasionally under the title
The Gun and the Bible
, a
simplistic choice possibly predicated on the belief that most viewers don't know what a pulpit is.

Heaven with a Gun
. Directed by Lee H. Katzin, starring Glenn Ford, Carolyn Jones, Barbara Hershey, John Anderson, and David Carradine. 1969.

Ford, who was never anything less than stalwart, puts in a solid performance in the
Shane
-like role of a former man of violence compelled by circumstances to strap on a gunbelt under his frock coat. One of those stirring movies in which a cowed community is shamed by its spiritual advisor into taking its fate in its own hands. (John Carradine, David's father, deserves honorable mention for playing clergy so oftenâmost memorably as the tragic Jim Casy in
The Grapes of Wrath
âas to qualify for common-law ordination.)

Pale Rider
. Directed by Clint Eastwood, starring Clint Eastwood, Michael Moriarty, Carrie Snodgress, Christopher Penn, and John Russell. 1985.

Eastwood's spooky savior wears a clerical collar and answers to “Preacher,” but he spouts more bullets than gospel in a nearly scene-for-scene plagiarism of
Shane,
with a heavy overlay of his earlier
High Plains Drifter
. Former
Lawman
star Russell is hypnotic in his last role, but it's a dreary film and misses all the subtlety of its inspiration.

Notes

A Forge Book

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE BOOK OF MURDOCK

A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

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eISBN 9781429934565

First eBook Edition : April 2011

First Edition: April 2010