McMurtry continues the compelling saga of the Berrybender family, who made their debut in his phenomenal "New York Times" bestseller, "Sin Killer," as they make their way across the endless Great Plains of the West towards Santa Fe.

Reviews

In this third volume of McMurtry's Berrybender Narratives, Lord Berrybender and his obnoxious, sniveling brood are, surprisingly, still alive on the dangerous Great Plains of Wyoming and Colorado. The wry story of mountainman adventure and European stupidity, set in the 1830s, is just as wacky and gruesome as its predecessors, Sin Killer and The Wandering Hill. Lord Berrybender is a pompous, lecherous, drunken, one-legged English aristocrat on a hunting expedition in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. Surrounded by his four willful and opinionated daughters, inept servants and a haughty mistress, he is protected by an accompanying group of unwashed mountainmen and trappers. His eldest daughter, the vulgar and loudmouthed Tasmin, is married to Indian fighter Jim Snow, aka Sin Killer, and their marital relations are anything but blissful. In this installment, the hunting party slowly travels from its winter camp in the north, southward toward Santa Fe, on a journey filled with seduction, infidelity, short tempers, heat, thirst, Indian attacks and ever more lusty copulation. The sudden and unlikely arrival of two European journalists in a hot air balloon brings more tragic comedy to the prairie soap opera; other irritants include a smallpox epidemic, a mysterious Indian who cuts off the ears of sleeping white men and a murderously insane Mexican army captain. McMurtry's Europeans are all idiots, while the Indians and mountainmen, including Kit Carson, Tom Fitzpatrick and Hugh Glass, are portrayed as honorable men. The Berrybender clan is so annoying one wishes they would all be massacred by the Indians, but enough of them survive to ensure there will be plenty of Berrybenders to kill off in the next installment. One can only hope. Agent, Andrew Wylie. (Nov.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

One tends to think that the Great Plains of the 1830s was empty, but the wandering Berrybenders manage to meet just about everyone who was anyone at the time. This third of a four-part series suffers because there is no beginning and no end-the action is much the same as in the previous installments. Lord Berrybender, the one-legged English aristocrat, is still alive and still hunting and still randy, although his mistress's threat to tear his throat out subdues him somewhat. The old man is traveling south toward Santa Fe with his four daughters and his moronic servants, a bunch of Indians, and the ever-faithful mountain men when the group is joined by a pair of hapless European journalists in a hot-air balloon. What could have been a rather exciting event deflates quickly into the same old tragicomedy that hallmarks these works. The listener will be grateful that Alfred Molina gives his usual dazzling performance and that the pacing is good. Recommended for public libraries where the other volumes have circulated.-Barbara Perkins, formerly with Irving P.L., TX Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.