Review: Scoundrel in the Thick by B.R. O’Hagan
Description (from Amazon.com)
Colorado, 1882. When his best friend’s fiancée is kidnapped, an unlikely hero must battle robber barons, bandit gangs, the US Cavalry, and Cheyenne warriors to bring her home. Along the way he will also have to foil a plot to steal a country.
Civil war hero and adventurer Thomas Scoundrel didn’t expect the search for his friend’s fiancée in frontier Colorado to be easy. He also didn’t expect to be beaten and tossed into a desert ravine by a powerful cattle baron, tortured and held captive in an Indian village, or pursued for weeks by dozens of hired guns.
He teams up with Marshal Bat Masterson, reunites with his old friend Buffalo Bill Cody and falls under the spell of Dawn Pillow, a beautiful native healer. A German paleontologist comes to his aid, along with a wild Scottish preacher, a Cossack army officer, an opera-loving Cheyenne chief and the legendary bandit leader, Demetria Carnál.
Much of the action takes place outside Denver during an international fishing tournament where young Adolf Coors serves up beer, author Mark Twain makes an impassioned speech, and Mary Orvis teaches anglers how to tie a fly.
Mix in a ‘flying’ T-Rex, poetic silver miners, fly-fishing native warriors, Oscar Wilde, a plot to steal northern Mexico and, of course, plenty of dynamite, and Scoundrel in the Thick takes the historical novel to new heights of adventure and humor.
My Thoughts
Set in my own stomping grounds, Scoundrel in the Thick by B.R. O’Hagan is probably one of my favorite reads of the year. When I was little, I visited the graves of many of the characters found within this long and highly entertaining historical fiction novel. (Reading that back, I guess my family vacations were filled with odd detours to gravesites. “Look, son! That’s where Buffalo Bill’s bones are.”)
The story starts with a bang (literally) and doesn’t let up. From the history behind Thomas Scoundrel’s name to the intense fight scenes, I found myself “binge watching” the novel. Each chapter is like an episode itself, and as other reviewers have mentioned, this book would make a great series. Not that I’m advocating for one form of artistry to become another, but that’s the way the novel is written and it works well. The screenwriter in my head was, at times, translating the words to scenes in a script.
Scoundrel’s goal is to rescue his best friend’s fiancée, but like any good plot, there is a slew of obstacles. O’Hagan does a great job leading us through the West from the battlefields of the Civil War to Colorado to Mexico to the Arizona and New Mexico territories. Each stop along the way is described in just the right amount of detail that I could place myself there in the year in which it was set. There is political intrigue, intense action scenes, both dramatic and comedic moments, and even some well-paced romance.
I am a huge fan of historical fiction, especially the Western, but only if it’s done right. For that to be true, I need to feel like I’m embedded in the story with all the details of the time period in which it is set correct. Although I tried (because I’m that kind of a reader), I could not find a single anachronism to call out. O’Hagan’s extensive research is apparent in this novel, and I personally cannot wait until the next installment (oddly enough, also set in one of my old stomping grounds). Scoundrel in the Thick is a novel that now sits next to Louis L’Amour, Larry McMurtry and Zane Grey on my bookshelf as a great Western to revisit again.
Available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09Q175M1F/
