Last Bus to Wisdom
by Ivan Doig (Riverhead Books)
Ivan Doig, who died this year, was known for his nonfiction as well as his novels. His final work is the story of the adventures of an 11-year-old boy who travels across the country on a Greyhound — the so-called dog bus. Doig surely drew on his own memories of boyhood to write this engaging and lighthearted novel.
Donal Cameron lives on a Montana ranch with his grandmother, the cook, who is taken ill and must have an operation. No one there can care for him, so Donny is shipped off to Wisconsin for the summer of 1951 to live with his grandmother’s sister. His precious autograph book in hand, he meets a variety of characters on the dog bus, even has an encounter with Jack Kerouac.
To Donny’s dismay, his aunt, the spitting image of Kate Smith, is a bossy, self-righteous woman who makes life hell not only for Donny but for her husband, Herman, a German immigrant. Furious at the boy’s antics, she ships him back to Montana to live with a foster family. Donny is devastated. But who should be on the bus but Herman, who has ditched his wife and is ready to discover the West.
The two have a series of adventures that are both comical and poignant, including one at the Crow Fair, where Donny dons an Indian costume to hide from his grandmother’s ranch boss. All the while, Granny thinks Donny is having a wonderful summer with his aunt because of a series of letters he has written that are posted weekly by one of Herman’s Wisconsin friends.
“Last Bus to Wisdom” is evocative of the early 1950s. There may be too many coincidences in the book, but who cares? This might not be the most literary of Ivan Doig’s books, but it could be his most fun to read.
The Killing Lessons
by Saul Black (St. Martin’s Press)
Rowena Cooper glances up at two men standing in her hallway in the fictional Colorado town of Ellinson and knows she’s in trouble. Big Trouble. The psychopaths murder Rowena and her son. Only her daughter escapes, running to the cabin of a neighbor. In this black thriller, the men are serial killers who have abducted, tortured and murdered several women, leaving their bodies decorated with bizarre objects.
Valerie Hart, a jaded, alcoholic San Francisco detective, is obsessed with solving the murders. She let her obsessiveness destroy her relationship with Blasko, another cop, three years before. Now he has returned to San Francisco. And so has a female FBI agent who seems more interested in Hart than in solving the case.
“The Killing Lessons” is a violent book. Author Saul Black builds tension by going back among the characters, switching from Valerie to the two killers, Xander and Paulie, to an abducted woman to the Cooper girl, who is holed up in the cabin because she has been injured and can’t walk, and the owner is incapacitated. The killers and their motives are slowly revealed through horror almost as devastating as what they wreak on their victims.
This thriller is a black look at unleashed evil, as well as justice and even redemption.
Buffalo Trail
by Jeff Guinn (Putnam)
Cash McLendon, the hero of author Jeff Guinn’s Old West novel “Glorious,” returns as a buffalo-bones collector in Dodge City, in the second part of a trilogy. Cheated out of his money by Doc Holliday, McLendon is reduced to gathering bones with Bat Masterson. McLendon’s plan is to save enough money to go to San Francisco to seek his fortune and to hide from a killer who has been trailing him.
Then he discovers the woman he loves is not married, as he had supposed, and he is determined to woo her. But first he needs money. So he agrees to join a company of buffalo hunters in search of a big herd in the Texas panhandle. They settle at Adobe Walls.
Trouble is that Quanah, the legendary Comanche, is putting together a confederation of tribes who plan a major attack on a white encampment. Working with a fake mystic named Isatai, Quanah persuades the Kiowas and Cheyenne to work with the Comanche instead of launching individual attacks. Victory — prophesied by Isatai — will drive the whites from Indians lands, Quanah promises. The result is the bloody battle at Adobe Walls.
“Buffalo Trail” is an old-fashioned adventure based on fact and peopled with historical characters, pitting Indians against whites. You can imagine the outcome.
