Bandit Heaven
Bandit Heaven by Tom Clavin
Reviewed by L. Bennett
Bandit Heaven is a story about some of the West's better recognized outlaws and their reliance on the three hideouts that the author refers to as heavens: Brown’s Hole, Robbers Roost, and Hole-in-the-Wall. Set during the 1880s and 1890s when the wild west was on the verge of domestication, Tom Clavin uses documented historical accounts, newspaper articles, and a variety of other sources to tell stories about Butch Cassidy, Tom Horn, Charlie Siringo, and others as they rob, murder, arrest, escape, and die in pursuit of their particular brand of life in the West.
Footnotes are rare, although there is a bibliography, selected photos are included, and the book is arranged largely in chronological sequence. I found the book was an ok read. It did not reveal very many new tidbits of history, but what it said was written well and the narrative flowed. More than once I was pleasantly surprised by the smooth segues that prevented the book from being a bunch of stand-alone chapters.
