Although the cover of the hardback edition of Oakley Hall's fifth Ambrose Bierce mystery, Ambrose Bierce and the Ace of Shoots has pictures of "Buffalo Bill" Cody and Annie Oakley, the Wild West Show that is appearing in San Francisco ca. March, 1892 is a would-be rival. Dora Pratt, its "ace of shoots" is the second-best shooter in America, after Annie Oakley and "Buffalo Bill" wants to hire Miss Pratt to have a rolling contest between her and Miss Oakley.
"Colonel" Studely has the vanity and much of the showmanship of "Buffalo Bill," but is murdered early on. The narrator of this and Hall's other Ambrose Bierce novels, Tom Redmond, is a legman for the San Francisco Examiner' s acidic columnist Ambrose Bierce. An entry from Bierce's Devil's Dictionary serves as an epigram for each chapter, and it is Bierce who eventually works out the answer to the Whodunit question—assembling suspects in the manner of Hercules Poirot or Nero Wolfe. The Bierce/Redmond duo have been likened to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, but it seems to me that Redmond romancing the ladies and off on his own following up leads is more like Archie Goodwin than like the breathless stooge Dr. Watson. Bierce stirs from his lair (which seems to be the restaurant in the Palace Hotel more than his Examiner office, let alone a home more than Nero Wolfe does, but identifies murderers more through psychology than "scientific" evidence in the Holmes manner. And like Goodwin's, Redmond's investigations provide important data, not just surmises to be corrected by the master (as in the Watson/Holmes duo).
The very public shooting of "Colonel" Studeley has a prime suspect, Oswald Bird, who following his release from prison for slaying four men in a land dispute in "Hungry Valley," has taken revenge on the Southern Pacific Railroad by robbing a train. Redmond less secures an interview with Bird than is secured to tell Bird's story, which included death threats for Studely and Southern Pacific vice-president Arliff K. Potter (who had hired Bird to clear out "squatters" on railroad land and then provided an inadequate defense lawyer for his defense). Bird also tells Redmond that he does not recognize the divorce by his former protégé, Dora Pratt, and that the money he has seized as belated payment from the SP will establish them south of the border (way south: Argentina).
The police initially suspect Dora of shooting the man ("Col." Studely who had dropped her, but are only too happy to shift to assuming that Bird has carried out the threats Redmond published. Meanwhile, Redmond is keeping company with Miss Pratt, who has four protectors from the show (including an African American, a Native American, and a Mexican American—sound like a platoon from a Korean War or Vietnam War movie?).
The romance is, for me at least, a yawner (like Archie Goodwin's). Bierce's foibles and bon mots are, as usual, the best part. The plot is complicated with feminists (suffragettes) and eugenics proponents the late "Colonel" Studeley was one, the politics of law in service to the Southern Pacific Railroad, and earlier vigilante "justice." Bierce and Hearst's newspaper are ever critical of Samuel Huntington and those who worked with or for him on the Southern Pacific Railroad empire.
Naming an assassin "Oswald" and a vain womanizer "Studely" are not very subtle. There is a dim resonance from "Arliff," too, that I can't quite place.
Social criticism is indirect and displaced more than a century (gun violence, rapacious government-protected corporations, and genetic determinism are very much still with us). The romantic skeptic Bierce whom Hall envisions writes that "literature has nothing to do with 'reform,' and when used as a means of reform suffers accordingly and is justly unsuccessful. 'Helpful' writing makes dull reading. Art will laurel no brow with a divided allegiance. The best service you can render is to write well with no care for anything but that." Not just from the barely implicit critiques in the Bierce mysteries, but form what I heard Hall read from his new novel (and 26th book) Love and War in California, I am not convinced that Hall follows the advice he has Bierce offer.
I was more or less enchanted by the first book in the series, Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades, and disappointed that the second, Ambrose Bierce and the Death of Kings had no development of the Bierce and Redmond characters and seemed so much to be repeating the formula. I don'' know if Ambrose Bierce and the Ace of Shoots is better than Death of Kings. It repeats the formula of Queen of Spades, but it has been longer since I read previous installments… and my expectations were lowered by Death of Kings. I enjoyed the plotting, historical color, and representation of/sampling from Bierce—and the portrayal of greed and official complicity that might keep laurel from the author's brow.
© 2007, Stephen O. Murray
I hope that the title is sufficiently odd/arcane to qualify this review as a contribution to Rkingfish's database diving writeoff. I'll try to do better after my week in Charleston...
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