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" Chicago Tribune" A story as big as the West itself.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
In Larry McMurtry's "Sin Killer, " the first novel of a major four-volume work, it is 1830, and the Berrybender family, rich aristocratic English, and fiercely out of place, is on its way up the Missouri River to see the American West as it begins to open up. At the core of the book is daughter Tasmin's relationship with Jim Snow, frontiersman, ferocious Indian fighter, and part-time preacher (known up and down the Missouri as the "Sin Killer"), the strong, handsome, silent Westerner who captures her heart.
Larry McMurtry has created a wonderfully engaging family confronting every bigger-than-life personality of the frontier as the Berrybenders make their way up the great river, surviving attacks, discomfort, savage weather, and natural disaster. At once epic, comic, and as big as the West itself, it is the kind of novel that only Larry McMurtry can write. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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IN the darkness beyond the great Missouri's shore at last lay the West, toward which Tasmin and her family, the numerous Berrybenders, had so long been tending. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
IN the darkness beyond the great Missouri's shore at last lay the West, toward which Tasmin and her family, the numerous Berrybenders, had so long been tending. Read the first page
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39 of 40 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
It's 1832, and Lord Albany Berrybender has chartered a steamboat to take him up the Missouri River on a hunting expedition. Albany is one of the richest aristocrats in England, and also a dissolute, selfish, old fool. Along for the ride are his wife Constance, six of their fourteen spoiled children, fifteen of nineteen servants, an aging parrot named Prince Talleyrand, the staghound Tintamarre, and a gaggle of American talent hired to ease their way, including Toussaint Charbonneau, the guide for the Lewis and Clark Expedition many years previous.
The first noticeable feature of SIN KILLER, the start of a four-book series, is the lengthy cast of players requiring a two-page character list. In addition to all those on the boat, there's a couple dozen ashore - Indians, trappers, and such - to provide local color. Chief among these is the SIN KILLER, a young trapper named Jim Snow, who has an exaggerated sense of God-fearing righteousness and an awkward way with women.
Since McMurtry's tales of the Old West are, for its characters, affairs perilous to life and limb, I immediately expected some of the English crowd to soon become victims of misadventure. (After all, such a large number is a heavy load to carry.) I wasn't disappointed.
It's apparent early on that the main protagonist of the book, and I suspect the series, is Tasmine, Lord Berrybender's independent and willful oldest daughter. Nothing scares her, not even her Old Man. And I expect the villain of the piece, the cruel, old Aleut-Russian squaw Draga, who passes herself off as a sorceress, won't scare Tasmine either if and when their paths cross. (Draga is a psycho in the grand tradition of other McMurtry psychos such as Blue Duck and Mox Mox. Remember them?)
Judging from this first installment, there are a couple of reasons I don't think the Berrybender saga will be the author's best work. First of all, crucial events happen relatively quickly without too much plot or character development. Perhaps, as McMurtry gets older, he's driven to get it written and published faster. (You never know when you're going to be ambushed and scalped by savages.) Secondly, a lot of the action and dialogue has a slapstick quality about it that seems forced. However, at 300 pages, SIN KILLER is a quick, engaging read.
I loved McMurtry's LONESOME DOVE trilogy. (The 1989 miniseries adaptation of that title starring Robert Duvall is my favorite western of all time.) While perhaps not presaging such excellence, this first volume of the Berrybender epic left me looking forward to the next. Oh, and I hope Prince Talleyrand continues to survive. Like Gus's pigs in LD, he's very cool.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
If like me you have read almost everything written by Larry McMurtry then you will quickly realised that this as with the others in the four-book Berrybender series is not in the same class as his superb Western trilogy :Lonesome Dove, Streets of Laredo and Dead Mans Walk or indeed anywhere nearly as good as his contemporary works:Terms Of Endearment, The Last Picture Show,Horseman,Pass By etc.One dimentional characters exaggerated story lines bordering on farce which Larry does not do well. Having read all four I now choose to comment on this first volume as a warning of what is to come.The next three do not get any better.It is an enigma that one of the greatest writers of American fiction,history and travel can also produce Sin Killer.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Having loved Lonesome Dove on TV and been impressed by the titles McMurtry has churned out over the years, it was only a matter of time before i read somthing by him. Despite his reputation, it is surprisingly rare to find any of his work at a British bookshop.
I went for the Sin Killer because it had a British family at the centre of it. Even the Welsh make an appearance. The book is very readable, I read it cover to cover in under a week, which is very quick for me. There is a pretty good appreciation of time and place. The writer gets one of the main characters, Lord Berrybender spot on. Although I suspect an affluent British Lord would have retired back to Northamptonshire after appendages started dropping off.
So far so good, for me though, the central love story is just too far fetched to hang the rest of the narrative on. We are asked to believe that a beautiful, rich young heiress decides to drop, literally everything, after a love at first site moment, with what appears, one up from a caveman. He barely speaks, is indifferent to her and gives her a good slap when he thinks she needs one.
This is a young lady who, at home would have certainly have met builders of Empire, who would have put our hero Jim in the shade in thought, word ,deed and wealth. Let us suppose that early 1830's England saw a disappointing class of Empire builders. Once on the trip she would have been introduced, at Baltimore, to men who were creating a fantastic new world, again people who would have put poor old Jim in the shadow.
The more Tasmin and Jim appear in the story, the more I reflected on the unlikley relationship. This is a pity, because, as mentioned, the premise of the overall story is a good one. McMurtry is a top class writer, despite, what was for me a major fault, he continued to engage me in the story.
I went for the Sin Killer because it had a British family at the centre of it. Even the Welsh make an appearance. The book is very readable, I read it cover to cover in under a week, which is very quick for me. There is a pretty good appreciation of time and place. The writer gets one of the main characters, Lord Berrybender spot on. Although I suspect an affluent British Lord would have retired back to Northamptonshire after appendages started dropping off.
So far so good, for me though, the central love story is just too far fetched to hang the rest of the narrative on. We are asked to believe that a beautiful, rich young heiress decides to drop, literally everything, after a love at first site moment, with what appears, one up from a caveman. He barely speaks, is indifferent to her and gives her a good slap when he thinks she needs one.
This is a young lady who, at home would have certainly have met builders of Empire, who would have put our hero Jim in the shade in thought, word ,deed and wealth. Let us suppose that early 1830's England saw a disappointing class of Empire builders. Once on the trip she would have been introduced, at Baltimore, to men who were creating a fantastic new world, again people who would have put poor old Jim in the shadow.
The more Tasmin and Jim appear in the story, the more I reflected on the unlikley relationship. This is a pity, because, as mentioned, the premise of the overall story is a good one. McMurtry is a top class writer, despite, what was for me a major fault, he continued to engage me in the story.
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