Bill Pronzini is a wonderful workhorse of a writer. I've been reading him since I was in college and that was a few decades ago. I've enjoyed many of his Quincannon series books and some of his Nameless Detectives books. I'm always up for reading a Pronzini book because I know I'll get a first-rate story with solid characters.

<em>Give-A-Damn Jones</em> is about a freelance typesetter who wanders the West lending his typesetting talents to newspapers all over the land. He's not very fond of his "Give-a-Damn" nickname but the name is appropriate because Artemis Jones isn't one to back down or walk away just because the going gets tough. When he walks into Box Elder, Montana he meets up with the local newspaper editor who is passionate about telling it like it is and instigating change. But the town is full of characters, such as the tough blacksmith with a reputation for cheating his customers; a travelling medicine show/dentist ready to pull teeth for free but recommending his alcohol/medicine to ease the pain; the former convict still trying to clear his name; the rancher who may have lied to convict the man (to protect his daughter); and the local sheriff who knows there needs to be some changes but isn't quite ready to mix it up. If Artemis Jones knew he was walking into a town so on the verge of exploding from within, he may have ridden past. But he's there now, and, well, he'll just give a damn.

It took me some time to get comfortable with this story. The book is written in first person and as I read, I noted that the first nine chapters were each told from the view point of someone different, and none of them Artemis Jones. Finally, then, we got some characters to tell their story in recurring chapters, and I began to understand what Pronzini was doing.

Jones doesn't talk or write about himself. If you want the story on him, he need to get it from everyone who's made contact with him, and that's how Pronzini is telling this story. And because they are first person accounts, we get a few additional details ... some sub-plots that don't necessarily affect Jones directly.

This is an interesting read for it's format and style. The characters are solid and real but a bit uninteresting. The town people's dysfunction is what makes them interesting and a the community gets sorted out we lose interest.

I also found it humorous that the itinerant typesetter lifestyle was known and respected in towns like Box Elder, Montana. I don't know my American history well enough to know if this was true or not, but I suspect this was Pronzini having a little fun.

Looking for a good book? <em>Give-A-Damn Jones</em> by Bill Pronzini is a western without the stereotypical gunslinger and it's the format of the book that is more interesting than the story.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Published by Tor/Forge Books on May 8, 2018

As much as I love the lyrical descriptions of setting and the complex characterizations found in literary fiction, there is a special place in my heart for storytellers who confront memorable characters with compelling conflicts and resolve their plots without placing an unnecessary word on the page. Not many storytellers have that gift, but the prolific Bill Pronzini is one of them. While Pronzini primarily writes crime fiction, he’s authored a number of westerns, including his most recent, Give-a-Damn Jones.

Owen Hazard, who narrates the first and last chapters in Give-a-Damn Jones, meets Artemas Jones in Butte, where Hazard hopes to find temporary employment as a typesetter before resuming his roaming. Hazard is awestruck; Jones is something of a legend among itinerant typesetters.

When Jones moves on to Box Elder, the story moves with him. Various chapters are narrated by: a ramrod who works for a cantankerous rancher named Elijah Greathouse; the town’s newspaper owner and his son; the town marshal and his deputy; a farmer; a bartender; a saddle maker who is waiting to die at the hand of a newly released prisoner who vowed to kill him; the released prisoner, who is innocent of the crime for which he served time; a painless dentist who sells an elixir and has his own version of a traveling medicine show; and the dentist’s banjo-playing sidekick. And then there’s Greathouse’s daughter, who loves the released prisoner, despite Greathouse’s efforts to keep them apart. Greathouse — who wants to keep all the ranch land in eastern Montana for himself and is trying to drive off settlers and itinerant farmers who have every right to be there — is the novel’s primary villain, although the saddle maker is a close second.

With so many characters, the plot zigs and zags to interesting places before it settles on an ending. Part of the story addresses the conflict between Greathouse and the released prisoner while another involves the conflict between the released prisoner and the saddle maker. Greathouse schemes against the newspaper owner, whose animosity toward Greathouse is evident in frequent editorials. Still another subplot introduces a conflict between the painless dentist and a mean-spirit blacksmith who doesn’t think his tooth extraction was as painless as advertised. Jones stays in the background for much of the story, although he wanders into the plot at opportune moments.

Prozinski doesn’t use his carefully chosen words to describe the big Montana sky or how characters feel about their childhood, but he crafts easily visualized settings and gives each character a distinct personality. Most of his workmanlike prose is used to move the story along its winding path. I always enjoy Prozinski’s novels for exactly that reason: he puts the story first, without neglecting characterization or atmosphere.

Traditional westerns are known for confronting issues of justice and injustice in stark terms, for separating the white hats from the black hats, and Prozinksi furthers that tradition here. While Give-a-Damn Jones isn’t a story of moral ambiguity, and while Jones has the classic humility of a western loner hero, the novel has elements of realism (Greathouse’s daughter isn’t chaste; Jones carouses in bordellos and hates riding horses) that distinguish it from the Westerns of the 1950s. In the end, Give-a-Damn Jones gets my recommendation because Pronzini, as he always does, tells a good story.

RECOMMENDED

Give-a-Damn Jones by Bill Pronzini

Big smile on my face as I type this review :)

Why? Well…my father put himself through school working as a printer and his stories of being a printer, friendships with printers and his collection of beautifully printed documents lead me and my siblings to choose printing instead of shop or home economics as our electives in high school. As I read about the typesetting and the terms used to describe the press and ink and everything else…so many memories were tapped that I sat and smiled then smiled again because…the book also tapped memories of reading my father’s collection of westerns…and in many ways this story of itinerate journeyman printer Artemas Give-A-Damn Jones made this Sunday a splendid one for me as I revisited the historical past of the United States but also my own.

The way this story is told made me think of Mark Twain, O’Henry and also of other authors from the past. It is told by various supporting characters who encounter Artemas but we never really hear from the main character except a few times in dialogue. Artemas may or may not have a reputation that is exaggerated – kind of like that of Paul Bunyan – but in truth he is bigger than life and a man I would love to meet.

Thank you to NetGalley and MacMillan-Tor/Forge for the ARC – This is my honest review.

5 Stars