This is not the best of McMurtry's work. Having said that, it's still studded with his trademark dialogue and quirky characters, which puts it head and shoulders above most of the genre. There are still a lot of Western tropes here â an Indian attack, a cattle stampede, gamblers, gunslingers, and girls of easy virtue, all culminating (more or less) with the infamous Gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone.

The plot â such as it is â meanders through the movement of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday as their somewhat aimless paths move closer to Tombstone, Arizona, and the 30-second shootout that impressed them on the American psyche. Along the way, they meet a potpourri of historical and fictional characters, including Buffalo Bill, Charlie Goodnight, and Quanah Parker, among others.

McMurtry also plays fast and loose with timelines in this maybe-fantasy / maybe-alternate-history / maybe-loopy-pastiche of scenes that are only vaguely connected and which may or may not have anything to do with the story arc. (Bill Cody, who actually lived until 1917, is shuffled off the mortal coil prior to Earp's 1879 move to Arizona; Charlie Goodnight's long-time business partner, Irishman John George Adair, becomes a quirky Englishman who manages to kill himself, his horse, and his greyhounds on his first wolf hunt.)

All in all, it's a collection of set pieces in which the characters come on stage or are captured in media res to exchange a few lines of pithy dialogue before the short chapter ends and new characters are shuffled forward on a new set for their number. It's a quick, entertaining read, but don't look for much history here.

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It's been awhile since I last read a McMurtry novel. Of course its hard to compare anything he has written to his Pulitzer Prize winning Lonesome Dove which is probably my favorite novel of all time. And The Last Kind Words Saloon was definitely not Lonesome Dove but it was still an enjoyable look at the old west. It was a light, humorous, and fun read with McMurtry telling his own version of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday. He states on the back cover that "I had the great director John Ford in mind when I wrote this book; he famously said that when you had to choose between history and legend, print the legend. And so I've done." The novel takes Wyatt and Doc from the small settlement of Long Grass, Texas, then on to Denver where they briefly and comically play gunfighters in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Then they finally make it to Tombstone through an apocalyptic sand storm. Along the way are other notables including Charlie Goodnight, the famous rancher who also appears in McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series; Nellie Courtright, the newspaper reporter who was the focus of the McMurtry's novel Telegraph Days; Quanah Parker, the Comanche Chief; and the Clantons of Tombstone.

Overall, I did enjoy this for what it was: a "comically subversive work of fiction" as stated by Joyce Carol Oates in the New York Review of Books. Was this historically accurate? Of course not . . . for example the book has Buffalo Bill dying before the Earps get to Tombstone. But he actually died in 1917 while the gunfight in Tombstone happened in 1881. A mild recommendation for this one.

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