Blood Moon by K. Patrick Conner (review)

86 Western American Literature Blood Moon. ByK. Patrick Conner. (New York: Doubleday, 1987. 208 pages, $16.95.) K. Patrick Conner has woven a tense tale of murder and intrigue in Blood Moon. He has also managed to employ a place—California’s Sacramento Valley—as an active element in this, his first novel. Donny Cannon, the book’s protagonist, “was quickly seduced by Rancho Esquon’squiet isolation and the valley’s recurring, hypnotic rhythms, the relentless summer sun and winter’s chilling lowland fog, two enduring seasons broken only by a few turbulent weeks of storm and uneasy respite.” Cannon’s partner Michael Morrisey has been shot to death while flying sheriffs in search of marijuana patches in the Sierra foothills. His erratic, erotic sister, Megan, comes to Rancho Esquon tomake final arrangements, and Cannon is as swept by her allure as he is troubled by the circumstances of her brother’s death. Conner then braids the two related threads into a tale that is true to the dynamics of the region: water brokers and developers hover near the novel’s core, as do stucco motels and cafes with peeling paint, autocratic sheriffs and compassionate waitresses. If the novel is not entirely successful, if it drags a bit here and becomes confusing there, it is not because Conner’s talent seems deficient. On the con­ trary', he writes very well—even at small points: he is, for example, deft at creating similes—Megan’s beauty “sizzled like a wasp in a jar” ; “the phone hung on the wall as silent as the watermarks left by last winter’s rains”; “He felt raw as an open wound, his nerves as brittle as blown glass.” On the other hand, Conner uses so many similes that in places they interfere with his story’s flow. With a bit more experience, this interesting new western voice is apt to moderate his use of such devices and write even more effectively. K. Patrick Conner is not yet Robert Parker or Tony Hillerman, but he probably doesn’t want to be, for one senses that he is not interested in writing genre novels, but is in fact a regional writer of potential note, one who may evidence continued concern for place as his craft improves, and who may give readers more and even better pictures of his West. This, his first novel, is well worth reading. GERALD HASLAM Sonoma State University The Man Who Rode Midnight. By Elmer Kelton. (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1987. 261 pages, $16.95.) To many people, if a Western includes automobiles and electric lights, it has betrayed the model which spawned it, a form based on conventions established by Owen Wister in The Virginian, formalized by Zane Grey, and imitated by countless writers after them. Yet many of today’s readers below ...