Created by Douglas C. Jones
(1924 –98)
— Oscar’s directions on the proper method for guarding a suspect
Before there was Deadwood or Unforgiven, there was 1991’s The Search for Temperance Moon, which reads like a sepia-toned hard-boiled cross between Larry McMurty’s Lonesome Dove and James Crumley’s detective novels featuring C.W. Sughrue and Milo Milodragovitch.
It’s 1892, in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and disgraced former U.S. Deputy Marshall OSCAR SCHILLER has been hired by a local madame to look into the murder of her mother Temperance Moon, the infamous “outlaw queen” of the unsettled “Indian Territory.”
Oscar jumps at the chance. He lost his job as a Marshall due to an unfortunate whorehouse incident (alcohol may have been involved), and all he really wants is a chance to be reinstated. He’s tired of living in the basement of a local businessman’s home, working as a guard at the man’s scissors factory, and occasionally diddling the man’s wife.
Oscar’s a small, humourless man, the Continental Op turned bad, with pale eyes tucked behind thick, steel-rimmed glasses. And he’s got a nasty little cocaine habit and a staggering propensity for violence. But he’s also a methodical and shrewd detective with an extensive network of various lawmen, both white and native, official and unofficial, whom he can count on to help.
And in turn-of-the-century Arkansas, a man needs all the help he can get. As someone remarks, “The things Oscar Schiller deals in are always bad. For somebody.”
Although Schiller first appeared as a US Marshall in quite a large role in Winding Stair way back in 1979, it was The Search for Temperance Moon that really set the stage for what could have been a great series. In fact, Oscar did appear in a highly recommended sequel, 1997’s A Spider for Loco Shoat, set in 1907, in which he’s looking into the murder of one of Fort Smith’s most powerful citizens.
Unfortunately, the author, Douglas C. Jones, died just as the book was going to press.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Douglas Clyde Jones was a painter, a jazz musician and an author of historical fiction, including alternative history–his first novel, The Court-Martial of George Armstrong Custer, was based on the premise that Custer had survived the Little Big Horn. A recipient of the Golden Spur and Owen Wister Awards for his Western fiction, as a boy he lived for a while in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and was later drafted into the army, where he served in the Pacific Theater during World War II. After the war, he attended the University of Arkansas and obtained a bachelor’s degree in journalism, but subsequently returned to the army and served for another twenty years, obtaining a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin.
NOVELS
- Winding Stair (1979) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- The Search for Temperance Moon (1991) | Buy this book
- A Spider for Loco Shoat (1997) | Buy this book
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- My Heroes Have always Been Cowboys
Cowboy Eyes of the Old West.
Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
