In To Hell on a Fast Horse, Mark Lee Gardner’s portrayal of both Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett just about manages to maintain a balance between fact and fiction, the romantic and the repellant. It also keeps a pretty decent handle on the reality of late nineteenth century New Mexico, Texas at al. This is especially welcome when – on more than one occasion – the subject matter has been ‘given the treatment’ in terms of Hollywood mythology.
Of course, if you have no interest in ‘The Wild West’ or ‘cowboy movies’ then none of that will matter very much to you at all!
One interesting point, however. At the end of the book Gardner draws some pretty solid lines between a few Wild West characters and the upper echelons of the American political stratosphere. It appears that US Presidents (including Teddy Roosevelt, for example) had some significant dealings with characters who were less than savoury, who had ‘a past’. For an outsider such as myself, these connections were both surprising and fascinating – though whether anything can be inferred from them in terms of modern-day politics I leave to others to consider..!
Ian Gouge - Writer 