Black Hats: A Novel of Wyatt Earp and Al Capone
Let me start by saying I’m not a huge fan of anything western. So I knew I was taking a chance on a book that promised “the Wild West meets Prohibition.” But by page ten, I was hooked. How could I not be?
In Black Hats, legendary lawman Wyatt Earp is asked to travel to New York to keep Doc Holliday’s son, John Jr., from being killed by a young mobster named Alphonse Capone. Calling on his old friend, Bat Masterson, equally legendary Wild West survivor and currently New York’s top sportswriter, to help him, they set out to save Holliday’s glamorous speakeasy.
Told from Earp’s perspective, this story rollicks along at a good clip as readers are drawn into his intoxicating blend of Wild West legend and hip Jazz-era myth. The juxtaposition of two such diverse, yet at the same time quite similar, lifestyles makes for fantastic storytelling. Written by the author of the Oscar-winning film Road to Perdition, this story has many similar elements—crime, violence, loyalty—which make it very hard to put down. So hard, in fact, that I read it in one sitting—a rarity for me!
