My Baby Loves Western Movies

In White Desert Loren Estleman skillfully combines the hard-boiled tone of PI whodunits with the conventions of westerns.

In this outing, apparently an installment in a series, a tough US Marshal goes after a gang of sadistic killers. He’s as cynical as a big-city detective, but settings he visits are pure Western. Helena, Montana is mud city. In Canada, the harsh winter is a major character.

Estleman, though, doesn’t just rely on the conventions but puts in unexpected places and characters too, such as a solid petit bourgeois household of a Meti family. Estleman shows excellent form, pace, and dialogue in this novel.