Warlock

This is the big novel that some day was bound to some day come out of our proud Western tradition. It is the story of a lonely marshal who was as much outside the law as the terrorists he was hired to destroy, and of the town he tried to rid of violence. Drawing on events known to have happened on the Southwest frontier of the 1880s, Oakley Hall not only has brought to life one of the most vivid periods of out national history, but has done it with a storytelling impact of a rare order. When the tale opens, Warlock, a territorial mining settlement, is in a state of virtual siege a the hands of a gang of desperado cattle rustlers led by a wanton killer. With no means of law enforcement other than a deputy sheriff, a Citizens Committee takes over and hires a "peace" officer, Clay Blaisedell, renowned gunman. The novel's action spans the year during which he his Warlock's marshal -- a year that begins in fear and desperation, and ends in a holocaust of violence. Blaisedell, fearless and righteous, ignites this tragic chain of events when he kills a man by mistake, unleashing treacheries, attempted lynchings, murders, and "walks" to kill down the main street. Out of the large cast of characters emerges a series of arrestingly realized personalities, from Blaisedell, a native son in the tradition of Wyatt Earp, to George Holloway, drunken judge "by acceptance" and voice of doom with his taunts of "Where is the law? Who are you? Where is your responsibility? Besides sweeping along on a rip-tide of mounting action, Warlock presents a searching drama of ever-widening circles of conflict which ultimately involve an entire town in common disaster. It is a powerful and a deeply imaginative novel that Oakley Hall has produced -- one that brings him to the high ground of American fiction -- Book jacket.