Having spent more than ten years reseaching this history of
brigandry and bloodshed in the Golden State during the second half
of the 19th century, San Francisco lawyer Boessenecker was
apparently reluctant to jettison any of the material he so
painstakingly uncovered. The result is a volume that only dedicated
California scholars will find of more than intermittent interest.
Boessenecker devotes far too many pages to the hour-by-hour
exploits of minor malefactors. Stagecoach hold-ups, each remarkably
similar to the last, follow one another in a seemingly endless
train. Even the details of the theft of kitchen spoons and
tablecloths are recounted with numbing thoroughness. The locations
of various gunshot and knife wounds - spleen, left shoulder, right
heel - are recited with courtroom exactitude. The narrative does
pick up slightly, however, when attention turns to the exploits of
the Knights of the Golden Circle, Confederate sympathizers who
represented approximately one out of every ten Californians during
the Civil War. Here, a certain relevance is achieved and a
little-known aspect of the state's internecine tensions is
revealed. Overall, however, Boessenecker doesn't deal with the
larger implications of his research. He fails, for example, to
illuminate the reasons for the widespread violence and the seeming
indifference to it that characterized the period. Why life and
property were so little valued by a comparatively large percentage
of the frontier population remains unexamined. Of value as a
reference work to students of the Old West, perhaps, but far from
the rip-roaring, action-packed narrative that general readers will
expect. (Kirkus Reviews)
Badge and Buckshot is a comprehensive book at many of the
once-famous peace officers and outlaws of Old California. Told here
for the first time are the true stories of Ben Thorn, the
iron-willed but scandal-plagued sheriff of Calaveras County; John
C. Boggs, the fast-shooting nemesis of the Tom Bell and Rattlesnake
Dick gangs; Ben and Dudley Johnson, the notorious "Tulare Twins";
Kid Thompson, whose train-robbing exploits took place just blocks
from present-day Los Angeles film and television studios; and
Coates-Frost feud, California's bloodiest vendetta, which endured
more than twenty years and left fourteen men dead. Here, too, are
the first complete accounts of Captain Ingram's Rangers, the band
of Confederate guerrillas who raided stagecoaches in California
during the Civil War; Steve Venard, the soft-spoken lawman who
killed three outlaws in a single gunfight; and the legendary Bill
Miner, whose career of banditry spanned almost half a century. The
product of more than ten years of painstaking research, Badge and
Buckshot recounts one of the forgotten sagas of the Old West, an
action-packed tale of shoot-outs, stage holdups, manhunts, and
lynchings. At the same time, through extensive use of pioneer
newspaper files, court records, and previously unpublished
illustrations, it shatters old myths and demonstrates the overall
effectiveness of the criminal justice system in Old California. For
authentic Americana, Badge and Buckshot is not to be missed. A San
Francisco attorney, John Boessenecker has authored six books and
numerous magazine articles on crime and law enforcement in the Old
West. His most recent book is Bandido: The Life and Times of
Tiburcio Vasquez, for which he was named Best Nonfiction Writer of
2011 by True West magazine.
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