![]() Lively pacing and artful prose lend polish to Phillips's cheerfully grotesque chronicle of western antics." -Publishers Weekly Bill's salaciousness rivals Don Juan's and he is utterly devoid of scruples, but his deadpan humor and cunning indifference to life's vicissitudes keep him likable. He learns that Maggie, from whom he is long separated, has returned to Cottonwood, so he abandons his life in California and returns, bent on rekindling their love affair. Jumping ahead 20 years, Bill's story resumes in San Francisco, where he is making his way as a photographer and sexual athlete. In the meantime, an outlaw family embarks on a crime spree that eventually pits Bill against Marc and sends Bill and Maggie fleeing. Marc capriciously selects Bill as a partner in his scheme to attract Texas drovers to a railhead, while Maggie plays a less-than-discreet game of spider and fly with Bill, the Kansas Casanova. The story, such as it is, centers on the arrival of Marc Leval and his lovely wife, Maggie, in the tiny farm community of Cottonwood. Estranged from his wife, he never brags about his peccadilloes, although it seems that his devotion to oral sex sets him apart from rivals and makes him the heart's desire of the voracious women who seem to be everywhere on the frontier. Ogden, 27, is a self-taught Greek and Latin scholar and a sexual libertine capable of seducing almost any woman he encounters. "Western epic, black comedy, and soft porn are cleverly spliced in this genre-bending offering from Phillips (The Walkaway The Ice Harvest), which relates the experiences of Bill Ogden, sometime farmer, sometime saloon-owner, sometime photographer in 1870s Kansas. "Cottonwood's rise from frontier lawlessness to respectability sweeps along briskly, unpacking surprises at every turn.Phillips' vision adds up to an indelible portrait of a haunted town, as starkly delineated and unsparing as an antique tintype." -Entertainment Weekly The story is shaggy, but its unique slant on the Old West is a major achievement." -Kirkus Reviews (starred review) The blazingly original Phillips writes with a deadpan humor and incisive irony. droll first-person narrative combines amorality with a genuine, if laid-back, joie de vivre. "Frontier Guignol in post-Civil War Kansas and California of the 1870s and '80s. Cottonwood is crime fiction at its best." -Michael Connelly "Scott Phillips is dark, dangerous, and important. Scott Phillips cements his reputation as a fearless, ambitious writer who never makes a false move." -George Pelecanos "Cottonwood is an adventurous, bawdy, and genre-bending epic. He writes about criminal behaviors-how they originate, how they transform character, how they become part of the cultural norm and, most incisively, how they flourish in certain environments." -The New York Times Scott Phillips doesn't really write crime stories. "This is fun, propulsive reading for anyone who likes historicals with a touch of mystery." &mdash Library Journal ![]() "Phillips's skillful use of real historical events will resonate with fans of George Macdonald Fraser's Flashman series." - Publisher's Weekly Starred Review "Phillips mixes real events, period turns of phrase, a noirish sensibility, and a cast of murderous women, madmen, drunks, grifters, and fools into a wildly entertaining, perhaps sui generis, slumgullion that might well be closer to reality than readers would imagine." - Booklist ![]() Let's hope Phillips spares us from waiting another decade for this book." - The St. You can't help thinking that there's a third novel looming, this one set in that city by the bay. ![]() "Phillips has a nice touch in using nasty characters as first-person narrators. "Phillips's juicy vernacular is perfect for Bill's louche narrative voice, and his easy, flowing style suits the loose morality and freewheeling spirit of a hotheaded young nation." - New York Times Book Review It is a joy to read Phillips." - Huffington Post He chooses just the right details and the right amount of details so as not to clutter his sentences which flow tripingly on your tongue. Phillips description is lurid, colorful and powerful. The ladies drop their drawers or veils in an instant in his presence and this is great fun to read. ![]() His writing is frank, vivid and hot, but the man is rarely the aggressor. "Phillips has a way of writing a bon vivant of the Wild West with testosterone raging without it appearing macho or obnoxious or ego centric. ![]()
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