The Master Executioner - Hardcover

Estleman, Loren D.

 
9780312869700: The Master Executioner
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0312869703 ISBN 13: 9780312869700
Verlag: Forge Books, 2001

Inhaltsangabe


Ordinary people do not understand Oscar Stone. Everything he does, he does impeccably. He is a profound student of his art, completely versed in its traditions over the centuries. He is a student of ropes and their properties, a master of the latest scientific knowledge about the human neck, a careful calculator of weights and drops, and an exacting observer of results.

For more than a quarter of a century he has worked to create a reputation as a man peerless in his craft: the master executioner.

Yet he is utterly alone: His devotion to his work costs him his marriage. Suddenly, one day, a piece of his past catches him unawares, and Oscar comes to a moment of devastating truth and for the first time knows himself.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor


Loren D. Estleman was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and graduated from Eastern Michigan University with a BA degree in English Literature and Journalism in 1974. In 2002, the university awarded him an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters for his contribution to American literature.

He is the author of more than fifty novels in the categories of mystery, historical western, and mainstream, and has received four Western Writers of American Golden Spur Awards, three Western Heritage Awards, and three Shamus Awards. He has been nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award, Britain's Silver Dagger, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. In 2003, the mammoth Encyclopedia of Detective Fiction named him the most critically acclaimed writer of U.S. detective

Rezensionen

Oscar Stone accepts a temporary position building a gallows in Topeka, Kansas, where he meets Fabian Timothy Rudd, a hangman of some repute. Rudd is impressed with Stone's carpentry skills and pride in his work and so takes on the role of mentor as Stone becomes a kind of apprentice hangman. But no one loves a hangman, including his wife, who can't live with her young husband's career choice. Stone travels through the West with Rudd from execution to execution, drinking to dull the isolation and refining his skills. Miscalculations can lead to strangulation or worse: a beheading. Decades pass, and Stone has a final meeting with the wife who left him and learns a terrible truth. Estleman has created an unforgettable character in Stone. Swept up by circumstance and an unwanted gift for dispensing death, he's unable to break away from his life's fated path despite the loss of all he holds close. A dark, compelling journey into a previously unexplored facet of the Old West. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

This superbly crafted novel of the American West not only outshines any of Estleman's 12 previous novels (Billy Gashade, etc.) with Forge, it also stands far above considerably weaker efforts currently being cranked out by many who still labor in this fading genre. Oscar Stone goes from being a carpenter to a hangman, "a master executioner" who heard his calling by accident but once his talent is discovered, he embraces it to the exclusion of everything else, including his wife or any hope of an ordinary life. Fabian T. Rudd, a veteran executioner and frontier philosopher (and one of the most wonderfully original characters to come out of a western novel in years), tutors Stone in the finer points of death by hanging. The apprentice takes his lessons well beyond the fundamentals and elevates his profession from a mere vocation to a veritable art. He achieves personal (albeit dubious) celebrity as a result, but the darkness of his trade haunts the young man as he traverses the American West, dispensing the final act of justice, applying and always improving his expertise to guarantee an efficient and humane dispatch to some of the worst villains of the frontier. Eventually, Stone must come to terms with who he is and what he does. He tries to understand that to do a thing well and with respect is the greatest goal of human endeavor, no matter how grisly the particulars may be or how lonely he may become as a result. This excellent novel is well researched and effectively and unsentimentally delivered, with only the occasional anachronism marring a nearly perfect and historically accurate dramatization of the American West and the colorful people who built it. Print advertising in Western publications.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Verlag
Forge Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2001
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0312869703
ISBN 13 
9780312869700
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
272
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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