Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆
In the 1880’s, the town of Butte, Montana is a mining boom-town – instead of gold, it’s mostly copper which fuels its economy. The wealth comes at a cost, as the huge amounts of acrid smoke belched from the smelters and plants turns day into night, along with creating perpetually “noxious, disgusting air.” Off the train and into this smog steps Cat, a woman with no shortage of a past. A former prostitute, but also a ranch-hand, her preferred outfit of blue jeans and six-shooter is most atypical for a woman of the times. Almost immediately, she is drawn into the mysterious and suspicious death on the street of another “fallen woman,” Norma. The apparent cover-up goes right up to “Copper Kings” such as Marcus Daly (a real tycoon from that time and place), and it quickly becomes clear that whoever was behind Norma’s demise, is none to happy to find Cat looking into the matter. To find the truth, she’s going to have to navigate her way through both ends of Butte society.
What stands out for me is Wissler’s incredibly verbose style, in which a whack on the shoulder with a plank merits several pages of descriptive prose. There’s one sequence, where Cat returns to the boarding-house where she’s staying, and discovers an unexpected dinner party in progress, when it feels like chapters elapse between the front-door and dining-room. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing – it’s not like she’s Alexandre Dumas, getting paid by the word. Indeed, it’s often interesting to get a deep dive into Cat’s thoughts and motivations, since she has a past that influences much of her behaviour; not least, a hinted-at violent incident involving her sister, Alice and her abusive husband. But there were times when I would have been happier for the plot to move forward at less of a glacial pace.
There’s no denying the author’s talents at generating the nightmarish world, with its poisonous air, and yawning gulf between the haves and the have-nots. Those like Norma can be pitched from the former category into the latter in a moment – and return is almost impossible. Instead, you can end up in the tunnels below the city streets, a virtual living hell for the lowest of the low. Cat’s history gives her an ability to empathize with the lower classes, while still capable of interacting with their “betters”, though there are times when her abilities seem to come close to telepathy, in terms of reading people. She could probably make a great living as a poker player. And despite the pistol on her hip, the action is limited – she never gets to draw it at all. Even the final face-off with Norma’s killer in those tunnels, entered from one of Butte’s grandest brothels, sees her largely defer to others in the name of justice.
There are some typos and missing words in the text, and I wonder if the word “bum” – as in rear – would genuinely have been used repeatedly by an 1880’s cowgirl. It seems rather too British: surely “ass” or “butt” (not to be confused with Butte!) would have been more likely? But despite flaws, this does remains an evocative depiction of a time and place which feels different from the usual Western fare. And it’s all the better for that.
Author: Chrissy Wissler
Publisher: Blue Cedar Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 2 in the Cowboy Cat series.