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Title details for Bandit Heaven by Tom Clavin - Available

Bandit Heaven

The Hole-in-the-Wall Gangs and the Final Chapter of the Wild West

by Tom Clavin
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From multiple New York Times bestselling author Tom Clavin comes the thrilling true story of the most infamous hangout for bandits, thieves and murderers of all time—and the lawmen tasked with rooting them out.
Robbers Roost, Brown's Hole, and Hole-in-the-Wall were three hideouts that collectively were known to outlaws as "Bandit Heaven." During the 1880s and '90s these remote locations in Wyoming and Utah harbored hundreds of train and bank robbers, horse and cattle thieves, the occasional killer, and anyone else with a price on his head.
Clavin's Bandit Heaven is the entertaining story of these tumultuous times and the colorful characters who rode the Outlaw Trail through the frigid mountain passes and throat-parching deserts that connected the three hideouts—well-guarded enclaves no sensible lawman would enter. There are the "star" residents like gregarious Butch Cassidy and his mostly silent sidekick the Sundance Kid, and an array of fascinating supporting players like the cold-blooded Kid Curry, and "Black Jack" Ketchum (who had the dubious distinction of being decapitated during a hanging), among others.
Most of the hard-riding action takes place in the mid- to late-1890s when Bandit Heaven came to be one of the few safe places left as the law closed in on the dwindling number of active outlaws. Most were dead by the beginning of the 20th century, gunned down by a galvanized law-enforcement system seeking rewards and glory. Ultimately, only Cassidy and Sundance escaped . . . to meet their fate 6000 miles away, becoming legends when they died in a fusillade of lead.
Bandit Heaven is a thrilling read, filled with action, indelible characters, and some poignance for the true end of the Wild West outlaw.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    October 22, 2024

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781250282415

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781250282415
      • File size: 8759 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      June 1, 2024

      Bestselling Clavin (Wild Bill) explores the bandit hideouts in Wyoming and Utah that provided shelter to robbers, thieves, and others with a bounty on their head. These lawless locales housed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, among others. Clavin's work ranges across the 1880s and '90s. With a 200K-copy first printing. Prepub Alert.

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Kirkus

      November 1, 2024
      Of Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and other bad actors on the Western frontier. The glory days of the cowboy bandit lasted from about 1875 to 1905. Their turf extended from Canada to Mexico, "connected," pop historian Clavin writes, "by what came to be known as the Outlaw Trail." In this territory, Clavin's heroes and antiheroes plied their trade, a particularly favorite spot being a plateau that bordered Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado, allowing for easy escape from one jurisdiction to another. Clavin's cast of characters includes any number of figures who are well known to Western buffs, including Charles Siringo, the Pinkerton agent who, though he would later turn on the firm (and it him), spent years chasing after the Butch Cassidy-Sundance Kid gang; the hired gun Tom Horn, who cleaned out plenty of outlaws from their hiding places in the mountains, only to cross over into outlawry himself (and, notes Clavin, who wrote letters warning his intended victims that he was coming for them--"perhaps he still believed in fair play"); and the very bad Kid Curry, a stone killer who eluded capture while meting out death on lawmen and innocents alike for years. Some of Clavin's Western history is by the numbers, but to his credit he places the action in the larger context of social change: Butch and Sundance disappeared into the wilds of South America--and have never been definitively found in all the years since--because, Clavin writes, the Wild West had run out of time, while "the few outlaws who remained...were gradually driven or drifted out by bolder and more numerous lawmen, replaced by ranchers glad for new territory." Clavin's shoot-'em-up yarns don't break much new ground, but Western buffs will enjoy them all the same.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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