Port Hazard: A Page Murdock Novel [Mass Market Paperback]

After reading this book and loving it, as I do all the Estleman westerns, I decided to write a review and was surprised to see that mine would be the first review. If this indicates a lack of readership, that is a true shame because Loren D. Estleman is one of the finest writers working in fiction today.

This book is another entry in the western series starring Page Murdock, Deputy U.S. Marshall from the Montana Territory. In this installment, Murdock is sent to the Barbary Coast of San Francisco not many years after the end of the Civil War. His mission is to disrupt the activities of The Sons of the Confederacy, a dangerous fringe group that threatens the peaceful re-union of the states.

The Page Murdoch series works on a couple of different levels; the first being that of a well told, beautifully paced action novel. On another level, Estleman's westerns work as impeccably researched historical novels, a level in which this novel is particularly strong. Estleman brings the incredibly dangerous bustle of the Coast to life in these pages. From the criminal rhyming slang and gang warfare to the oily seduction of the opium dens, this is a place that nearly glitters with danger. When Murdock walks its streets, Estleman's expert prose makes the hair on the back of the reader's neck stand on end. Estleman's work is always sprinkled with historical detail, whether it be Murdock's beloved 5 shot Deane-Adams English revolver or the style of dress and manners.

And, of course, Estleman's westerns also work as mainstream literature. There is an unsentimental quality about his writing that is very refreshing, as well as elements of a very dry humor. The plotting is done with a master's touch, and every Page Murdoch adventure is backed by a brilliant storyline. In addition, nearly every page is sparked with a clever and concise turn of phrase that brings things in a fresh way to the reader's mind (much like Shakespeare).

Finally, the characters always jump right off the page and mark a place in the reader's memory. This novel is no exception. My favorite characters in this novel were Hodge, a dwarf bouncer that has a ball and chain were his hand used to be, who has to use a ladder to hop up on the bar, where he enforces decorum; and F'an Chu'an (Fat John) the powerful, menacing head man of the Chinese Tong gang.

To sum up, I truly hope I am not the last reader that will review this work. Estleman deserves to be widely read. --Mykal Banta

For a 19th-century Deputy U.S. Marshal in what was then the Montana Territory, Page Murdock gets around. In "Port Hazard," the seventh book of his Murdock series, novelist Loren Estleman throws his hero into old-time San Francisco. The result is an exhilarating read marred only in a few places by self-conscious reliance on the colorful criminal dialect of what was (before the earthquake of 1906) California's version of the Barbary Coast.

Although not as obviously movie-ready as Estleman's Nicotine Kiss: An Amos Walker Novel (Amos Walker Novels), "Port Hazard" reads like a film noir version of Lawrence Kasdan's sunny western, "Silverado." Kasdan worked with a cowboy, a little barkeep, and a racially integrated posse, just as Estleman does here, but Kasdan played his story in a major key, and Estleman writes in the literary equivalent of C sharp minor. Apart from Marshal Murdock and his reluctant sidekick, former Buffalo soldier Edward Beecher, Estleman's gallery includes a reformed prostitute, a one-armed dwarf, a professional gambler, a sinister politician, a self-ordained Christian militant, and a Chinese gang leader whom Westerners call "Fat John" because most of them can't pronounce "F'an Chu'an."

Estleman draws each of these characters with loving attention to detail, and each has a memorable idiosyncracy. Murdock, for example, favors a five-shot revolver of British manufacture rather than the six-shot Colt more common on the frontier. Beecher has a saber scar that he didn't get from fighting Indians. F'an Chu'an has a cleft palate. Axel Hodge keeps the peace with a ball and chain where his right hand would be if he had one. The ribbon around Nan Feeny's neck is a plot point rather than a mere decoration, and the self-ordained minister hates ice cream parlors. You get the idea.

Murdock's assignment is to drive a wedge between the militant and moderate wings of an organization called the Sons of the Confederacy. Tellingly, the moderates are, for the most part, actual veterans of the Civil War who gather for reunions in Virginia, while the militants are wannabes who were too young to serve the lost cause that now makes them hot-eyed along the Barbary Coast. To accomplish his mission, Murdock must cross paths with the "baby Rebels," and also with gangs known as The Tong and The Hoodlums.

Estleman makes the violence in his story plausible rather than operatic. Unholstered pistols are often but not always fired. The author knows his way around library microfiche catalogs, so one gets the impression that poor sections of San Francisco in 1883 looked, smelled, and sounded exactly as described here, with homicide shrouded by fog and muttonchopped city fathers who either look the other way or rail against "bludgeoners, blacklegs, swindlers, gamblers, smugglers, and uncertified celestials."

Apart from the sometimes-stilted dialog that Estleman admits in an afterward was unchracteristically hard for him to write, Port Hazard wears its meticulous research lightly. Among other things, readers are treated to factoids about the origin of the word "dive" (as a slang derivative of the divans on which opium smokers would pass out), and the peculiar influence of Oscar Wilde on certain American criminals.

I enjoyed this book. If you like westerns, crime stories, or fiction written with zest, you probably will, too.

Estleman brings a modern sensibility to the western format. His heroes are flawed, his villains love their mothers, and the girls are far from pure. He takes the western story places it has seldom been before, in this case into the opium dens of old San Francisco's Barbary Coast. Few western writers have Estleman's command of the language, inventiveness or creative plotting. All of that aside, the stories are a great pleasure to read, and this is one of his best.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 5 reviews  4.0 out of 5 stars