I'm your huckleberry

 Several store across my platform are selling the paperback of Tom Clavin's Tombstone: The Earp Brother, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride From Hell, and since I really enjoyed the Kurt Russel movie, I wound up checking the book out of the library. 

What I found was a well researched book that goes into a much deeper depth than many tellings of the tale. 

I mean, the first section of the book, before we even get into the Earp brothers getting to Arizona, centers on a bit of the history of the territory, the silver mines in the SE part of the territory, the natives of the area fighting for their territory vs being shipped off the the reservation, and the strangely hand off politicians of the era. 

By the time we get into the arrival of the Earps, we have a good idea of how the stage was set for catastrophe before they even got there. We also know quite a bit about the ranches in the area, many of whom were raiding nearby Mexican ranches for cattle to rebrand and sell, as well as the Cowboy gangs who were doing the rustling. 

My basis for comparison here is mostly the aforementioned movie, which, using this book as a yardstick had the events mostly correct, but not in the correct order. 

One of Clavin's main contentions in here is that many of the issues between the Earps and the Clantons had to do with a deal between Virgil and Ike to arrest other Cowboys with a fake stagecoach with the Clantons getting the reward money and Virgil getting the recognition. Since that deal, if discovered would have lost a lot of face for everyone involved...

Also, Bat Masterson's role, although he wasn't around for the gunfight and the vendetta, was new to me. (He was in Tombstone, but wound up returning to Dodge City to help his brother before the feud got ugly.) 

It would also seem that the big confrontation that everyone loves between Doc and Johnny Ringo happened long after the Shootout at the OK Corral, and some of the had to do with Doc's girlfriend, Big Nose Kate, getting romanced by Johnny, or at least being encouraged to get out of Tombstone. Also, given Doc was in Colorado when Ringo died, it's highly unlikely he shot him. Most likely, according to Clavin, Ringo died by his own hand. 

On the other hand, Mattie, Wyatt's commonlaw wife, does seem to love her laudanum, in every story, including real life. 

One thing I really enjoyed here was quotations from records of people not directly involved in the feud writing diaries or articles for the society pages in San Francisco. 

While the author does let his personal prejudices show a bit in his recounting, he does manage to point out how morally gray the entire affair was for all parties, and how it wasn't just the criminal element who didn't think the Earps Vendetta Ride was justified. 

Fun read, although like many things, sometimes the legend is more interesting than the truth.

And back to Elves on Wheels

 Finished up the other omnibus volume of SERRAted Edge a few days ago, but have been lacking in free time to update here.

Anyway. 

The Other World collects Wheels of Fire by Mercedes Lackey and Mark Shepherd as well as When the Bough Breaks by Mercedes Lackey and Holly Lisle. 

The first part concerns a young medium being kidnapped by a white supremacist Christian cult and being exploited to become a vessel for Salamander. Thanks to the continuation of this being in the previous omnibus, I already knew how this played out. 

The second concerns a young magician who's been abused by her father, who in turn was abused by his father. As such, she has 3 or 4 separate personalities running around, including a separate entity (a Celtic witch) who somehow wound up sharing the body with everyone else. 

One of the things I'd forgotten about this series is how many plots revolve around children in danger. Which is good and bad. Problem being, the latter book draws much from When Rabbit Howls, which was a much more interesting read. 

Still, it's engaging urban fantasy.

Da da devil is in da ta da tails

 Morgan Brice's new Witchbane novel, The Devil You Know, is actually a pretty good continuation of the story, even as it continues expanding the shared world she's building with all of her various and sundry series. 

Evan and Seth are in Cleveland looking for their next Witch Disciple, this time a drug dealing businessman who makes drugs for supernatural people. This time, Seth gets cursed (and kidnapped) with a spell that mentally connects him with his greatest desire, while Evan is stuck trying to navigate alliances with the Supernatural FBI to take down the next disciple. 

Seth's hallucinations are kind of painful to read, since his greatest desire is his family who died before the series started. It's rough reading about his relationship with his brother and parents, and it runs counterpoint to Evan's youngest brother who shows up in Cleveland and gets sucked in to the narrative. 

While everything does get resolved as one would expect in this series, dealing with things from both boys' past helps humanize them a lot more than what we've seen. Bonus points for Evan finally figuring out he's safe to not go back for a parental visit to retraumatize himself.  

Fun book.

One of us may be an Unreliable Narrator

 My employer sends out $25 gift certificates for anniversaries and birthdays, so last year I used one to buy Karen M. McManus's One of Us is Lying. 

My initial impression on reading it, which our murder victim Simon points out not long before dying is that it's The Breakfast Club, only Ally Sheedy dies 10 minutes in, and we spend the rest of the movie trying to figure out if it was Judd, Molly, Emilio, or Anthony who put peanut oil in her water. 

See, the set up here is that 5 high school stereotypes wind up in detention due to a teacher finding cell phones in their backpacks. We have Bronwyn, on her way to Valedictorian; Addy, who's popular and dating an athlete; Nate, who sells pills and weed as a side hustle; Cooper, a popular baseball player; and Simon, the outcast who runs About That, a Tumblr gossip site about the goings on at Bayside High School outside San Diego. (So, add Gossip Girl to the mix.) Towards the start of detention, several things happen. A car crash in the parking lot distracts everyone. Simon gets thirst, can't find his water bottle, and winds up using a chemistry glass to get water from the sink. And promptly goes into anaphylaxis. Someone runs to the nurse's office and finds that all the EpiPens are missing. Simon dies. 

Our 4 narrators become suspects in his murder after it comes out the vial had peanut oil in it (Simon had a peanut allergy) and a pending post from Simon reveals that Simon was getting really to expose rather damaging gossip about the other 4. (Bronwyn cheated to pass Chemistry, Addy slept with someone besides her boyfriend, Nate is still dealing while on probation, and Cooper has been juicing. All but one of those are true, although the lie gets exposed when someone breaks the encryption on what was supposed to go up.) To top it all off, someone keeps posting the the Tumblr detail on how the murder went down. 

Much like the Breakfast Club, the walls between our central characters come down as the year progresses, as they learn more about each other. However, as the title states, we're trying to figure out which of them is not telling the truth. 

As YA fiction, it works well, giving us the standard sanitized version of High School life, although that has changed quite a bit since I graduated. (I realize Christopher Pike, R L Stein, and J. K. Rowling all have their various issues, their YA fiction did a lot to bring YA fiction out of deathly dull morality plays.) As a mystery, it also works well, even if it doesn't quite get to the paranoia and claustrophobia that Dame Agatha managed to get in a few of hers in a similar vein. I mean, of the twists in here, one I had figured out early on, mainly because I knew the phrasing from personal experience, but the resolution I had thought early on then discarded, although the second part I had not foreseen. 

Honestly, I enjoyed reading it, and the solution and resolution fit the narrative, which is always good in any kind of mystery.