Review and interview
Every good western is a contest between the conventions of
the genre and a writer’s resistance to them.
It’s a fight to keep the
characters and plot from slipping into the well-worn grooves made by others.
Like driving a pickup down an old farm road, the trick is to stay out of the
ruts without going into the ditch.
The challenge has to be doubly demanding when adding to
the franchise created by someone else. The job then is to credibly continue the
legacy of one of those bestselling western writers whose names appear larger
than the titles on their book covers—in this case, Ralph Compton. It takes an
inventive mind and a masterful hand to enliven an old form with new ideas, and
Matthew Mayo brings both to the craft of storytelling.
Plot. Dead
Man’s Ranch is one of those rare cases of a western that has a title
with a direct connection to the story. The death of a man leaves the ownership
of his ranch in question, and on that hangs much of the action of the novel. An
acquisitive neighbor intends to get the ranch by any legal means possible. His
son wants it even if it means breaking the law.
The rancher’s common law wife and her son figure the ranch
belongs to them, while the dead man’s first-born son, raised by his mother’s
family back East, considers himself the legitimate heir. Add a bloodthirsty
villain with nefarious designs of his own, and you have the full contingent of
characters all on the same collision course.
You might expect a lot of gunplay with the ranch going to
the last man standing, but Mayo has something else up his sleeve. The guns
don’t come out until the final showdown, and until then, it’s anyone’s guess
how it’s all going to turn out.
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| Ranch corrals, Arizona |
Storytelling. I’ll
leave it to you to read the book and discover the rest of the plot. What’s
interesting is the way Mayo tells his story. Instead of a strong central
character who helps to resolve the conflict, the novel shifts focus from one
person to another, as tensions mount and they dig themselves deeper into trouble.
You expect the greenhorn, as a stock western character, to
step off the train into the middle of this mess, learn the ways of the West,
and see that justice is done. That doesn’t happen. Instead he gets sidelined by
a bushwhacking that leaves him gut shot and thinking he’s tried to kill someone
else.
The sinister villain in the novel is a phantom figure to
everyone except us. A kind of Fantômas lurking in plain sight, he dispatches
one person after another thinking he’s knifing his way into some money. His
name, by the way, is Mort Darturo, a play on the French word mort, meaning “death,” and Le Morte d’Arthur, a medieval romance about King Arthur.
A number of secondary characters cross the pages,
including the likable Sheriff Tucker, seen at one point putting a roof on his
privy. There’s also a down-at-heels saloon swamper, Squirly Ross, and a black
ranch cook called Hiram Bain. Squirly introduces a note of genuine humor when
he relates a long tale of being abducted by Apaches. Hiram qualifies as the
most decent man of the whole bunch, and he seems destined to wed Esperanza, the
proud and resourceful Mexican housekeeper of the dead rancher.
There are other minor characters, the most finely drawn of
them being Mitchell Farthing, an aging cowhand who has a fatal encounter with
Darturo. In just a few pages, Mayo gives him a colorful personality and a back
story that make you more than sad to see him go.
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| Ranch house, Montana |
Looking back. Mayo’s
novel makes an interesting comparison to westerns of 100 years ago. A central
theme of this novel is the parallel stories of three men, each trying to prove
himself a man. This is a plot thread to be found over and again in early
westerns, which are typically about the building of character.
Here we get the greenhorn fresh from the East, the
rancher’s son tired of living in the reflected glory of his old man, and the
son of the dead man scorned as a “half breed.” Each struggles to achieve
self-respect and to earn the respect of others. The hold that alcohol has on
two of them is a complicating factor. In pre-Prohibition fiction, it would also
reflect a bias toward temperance to be found in some novels.
A bigger difference between the two eras is the portrayal
of a black man. Black cooks are not uncommon in early westerns, but they rarely
do more than walk on as perfunctory and often comical characters. If they are
allowed to say anything, it will be in the broadly ungrammatical and uneducated
accents of the Deep South.
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| Ranch barn, Oregon |
By contrast, Mayo’s Hiram speaks fluent, standard English,
as do most of his other characters. He possesses intelligence and a calm
reserve that is unintimidated by the white family for whom he’s long been
employed.
The less likable characters in Mayo’s novel show their
ignorance and lack of moral fiber by flaunting their racial prejudice. One
hundred years ago, a character’s contempt for Mexicans would not have raised an
eyebrow. Following the Mexican-American War, they were considered a conquered
race not greatly different from the Indians.
Here it’s another matter. When a character is not duly
respectful of Hiram, Esperanza, or her son, they brand themselves as bigots.
Some people may complain about the inroads of political correctness, but I’d
like to hear them argue that we should go back to the old days.
Wrapping up. Matthew
Mayo tells a darn good story. Dead Man’s Ranch is briskly paced
and peopled with a large and enjoyable cast of characters. For readers who like
a little romance, I can add that the novel ends with a big kiss. This and other
books by Mayo, who also writes nonfiction, are currently available at
amazon
and
Barnes&Noble in both paper and ebook formats. And there's more about him
at his website.
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| Matthew Mayo |
Interview
Matthew has generously agreed to
spend some time here today to talk about writing and the writing of Dead Man’s
Ranch. So I’m turning the rest of the page
over to him.
Matt, talk a bit about writing as Ralph Compton,
another established author. How does a writer go about doing that?
Other than Ralph Compton’s name on the books, and a few
general directives (keep it clean—no overt sex, no unnecessary cursing, etc.),
the Compton novels are solely the efforts of the author hired to write them.
I
don’t think about Compton’s legacy or the line so much as I try to write the
best book I can in the time given. That said, it’s an honor for me to contribute
to the Compton line alongside so many writers whose work I’ve long enjoyed.
Would you have written this novel any differently if it
were a Matthew Mayo novel?
No, I wouldn’t change much, primarily because I consider
my Comptons to be Matthew Mayo novels. And they’re fun—they indulge my fondness
for writing involved stories in which characters find themselves in situations
they can’t shoot their way out of (but sometimes do!).
How did the idea for Dead Man’s Ranch suggest itself to you?
I was offered the slot, but the deadline was going to be
tight, in part because of other book commitments. I don’t like saying no to
opportunities, so I scratched my chin, rummaged in my computer, and pulled up
an early draft of a novel I’d called Dead Man’s Ranch. The editor liked my synopsis and the title. That
draft was roughly 75,000 words, and the Comptons are 80-85k, so I teased it
out, rewrote sections, added a subplot, more minor characters and build-up
scenes.
Is the published version similar to how you first
conceived it or somewhat different?
The published version is better than I first conceived it,
largely because I reworked it and rewrote it as I went along. I read somewhere
that writing is rewriting, and at least for me, that’s true. If my schedule’s
not too tight, I like the luxury of being able to go back over a manuscript
until it tightens.
