Finalist for Western Fictioneers' 2021 Best First Novel-Peacemaker Award
Sheriff John Donovan is fighting to maintain his grip on Three Chop, Texas, the town he built and has ruled with an iron fist for twenty years. But as the twentieth century looms, Donovan faces a host of new challenges: powerful business interests, religious schism, and the budding women’s rights and Prohibition movements. As he navigates these changing times, making friends of enemies and enemies of friends, a twist of fate brings to Three Chop a gang of fearsome outlaws looking to wrest new riches and settle old scores. How else could such a struggle end but with bloodshed? A final showdown forces the residents of Three Chops to take sides, to choose between the town’s past and future.
Called “one of those rare modern Western fiction classics” by New York Times best-selling author Jeff Guinn, The Sheriff pays loving homage to the Western genre while brilliantly puncturing the myths of the Old West.
I think that THE SHERIFF by Robert Dwyer and Austin Wright has a chance to be judged one of those rare modern Western fiction classics. The authors somehow manage to be both traditional and surprising on every page. … The town of Three Chop, grizzled Sheriff John Donovan, assorted outlaws radiating real menace, women just as desperate and cunning as any of the menfolk—there's damned fine storytelling here.
THE SHERIFF is the debut novel from authors Robert Dwyer and Austin Wright, and a strong debut it is. There are definite echoes of the traditional Western here but a more literary sensibility to the writing and plotting. It’s a bleak but impressive yarn and well worth reading if you’re looking for a Western that’s a bit offbeat while retaining a fondness for what’s gone before.
This end-of-the-West story has a lot to say—about everything from religion to mortality to progress to big business, and it does it without sacrificing action, pacing or authenticity. It’s so easy to recommend this book, it’s a big story about some big issues—leading to the big showdown.
