While not the most engaging or immersive western, 1981's "The Spoilers" holds its own with an attention-getting tough-guy protagonist, a clever and enjoyable plot arc involving 100 prostitutes, and a decidedly coarser view of the Old West than what you get from Zane Gray.
Luke Starbuck arrives in San Francisco at some unspecified period in the late 1800s, to a city already teeming with larceny and vice. A railroad boss wants him to look into a series of train robberies that have the hallmarks of an inside job. Starbuck works fast, and soon links the train robbers to the man who runs the underworld in San Francisco's Barbary Coast. But who is running him?
Braun doesn't follow the usual pieties of Western writers, the comfortable divide between good and bad you get from watching, say, "My Darling Clementine." The perfidy of Wyatt Earp and other popular Western heroes is a recurring theme in his work, along with a certain bleakness that crops up here with his descriptions of doomed maidens trapped in Chinatown brothels and political shenanigans that allow the guilty to escape.
"The winners hung the losers - or carted them off to prison - and things went on much as they always had and always would. The evils of man, corruption and greed, were the single constant." You'll probably cotton to "The Spoilers" if you're more in tune with Michael Moore than Louis L'Amour.
"The Spoilers" didn't quite do it for me, though it had a good run in the middle. That's when Starbuck goes undercover as a man from Colorado who wants 100 virgin prostitutes from China to fill four brothels back home. Starbuck plays the role to the hilt, and there's plenty of danger and sex on hand to keep you reading.
"The danger of being shanghaied was considered one of the lesser hazards of a shore leave in Frisco," Braun writes.
For all Braun's detailing of San Francisco's sordidness, you don't get any kind of feeling for the city as it was back then. He describes the street layouts, and mentions famous dives like the Bella Union, but his narrative lacks descriptive framing of any kind. The characters come off as thinly rooted, except for a Chinatown ganglord, his prize moll, and another dolly who thinks Starbuck is her ticket out. That last relationship may be the best part of the book, especially for teasing out Braun's bleak attitude on life and heroes. It would have come alive more, though, if everything else didn't feel so wooden.
There is a lot of contrivance in the book, too, like how the train robberies link up to everything else and how Starbuck manages to deal with the city's boss of bosses. But Braun keeps you reading, and his sentiment-free approach to Western lore is a tonic from other rawhide tomes you find.
Braun's iconoclastic views may put off some Western readers, but his approach is singular and worth consideration. He doesn't bore you with pieties, and he knows how to get your pulse going.
Luke Starbuck arrives in San Francisco at some unspecified period in the late 1800s, to a city already teeming with larceny and vice. A railroad boss wants him to look into a series of train robberies that have the hallmarks of an inside job. Starbuck works fast, and soon links the train robbers to the man who runs the underworld in San Francisco's Barbary Coast. But who is running him?
Braun doesn't follow the usual pieties of Western writers, the comfortable divide between good and bad you get from watching, say, "My Darling Clementine." The perfidy of Wyatt Earp and other popular Western heroes is a recurring theme in his work, along with a certain bleakness that crops up here with his descriptions of doomed maidens trapped in Chinatown brothels and political shenanigans that allow the guilty to escape.
"The winners hung the losers - or carted them off to prison - and things went on much as they always had and always would. The evils of man, corruption and greed, were the single constant." You'll probably cotton to "The Spoilers" if you're more in tune with Michael Moore than Louis L'Amour.
"The Spoilers" didn't quite do it for me, though it had a good run in the middle. That's when Starbuck goes undercover as a man from Colorado who wants 100 virgin prostitutes from China to fill four brothels back home. Starbuck plays the role to the hilt, and there's plenty of danger and sex on hand to keep you reading.
"The danger of being shanghaied was considered one of the lesser hazards of a shore leave in Frisco," Braun writes.
For all Braun's detailing of San Francisco's sordidness, you don't get any kind of feeling for the city as it was back then. He describes the street layouts, and mentions famous dives like the Bella Union, but his narrative lacks descriptive framing of any kind. The characters come off as thinly rooted, except for a Chinatown ganglord, his prize moll, and another dolly who thinks Starbuck is her ticket out. That last relationship may be the best part of the book, especially for teasing out Braun's bleak attitude on life and heroes. It would have come alive more, though, if everything else didn't feel so wooden.
There is a lot of contrivance in the book, too, like how the train robberies link up to everything else and how Starbuck manages to deal with the city's boss of bosses. But Braun keeps you reading, and his sentiment-free approach to Western lore is a tonic from other rawhide tomes you find.
Braun's iconoclastic views may put off some Western readers, but his approach is singular and worth consideration. He doesn't bore you with pieties, and he knows how to get your pulse going.
