SON OF THE OLD WEST

Sub-titled 'The Odyssey of Charlie Siringo: Cowboy, Detective, Writer of the Wild Frontier', this is an award-winning biography which tells the tale of a strange and distinctly American life, a Texas cowboy who paints a broader picture of bygone times. It is 'A twisting storm of horseback odyssey, snake-bitten fortune telling, class warfare, and deep-cover pursuit of legendary outlaws.' Charlie Siringo was born in Matagorda, Texas, in 1855, and went on his first cattle drive at age of 12. He spent two decades living his boyhood dream as a cowboy. As the dangerous, lucrative "beeves" business boomed, Siringo drove longhorn steers north to the burgeoning Midwest Plains states' cattle and railroad towns, inevitably crossing paths with such legendary figures as Billy the Kid, Bat Masterson, and Shanghai Pierce. In his early 30s he joined the Pinkerton Detective Agency's Denver office, using a variety of aliases to investigate violent labour disputes and infiltrate outlaw gangs such as Butch Cassidy's train-robbing Wild Bunch. His bestselling, landmark 1885 autobiography, 'A Texas Cowboy', helped make the lowly cowboy a heroic symbol of the American West. His later memoir, 'A Cowboy Detective', influenced early hard-boiled crime novelists. Sadly sued into debt by the Pinkertons, determined to prevent their sources and methods from being revealed, Siringo eventually sold his beloved New Mexico ranch and moved to Los Angeles where he advised Hollywood filmmakers, and especially actor William S. Hart, on their early 1920s Westerns, watching the frontier history he had known first-hand turned into romantic legend on the screen. Known as the Ulysses of the Wild West, his biographer skilfully brings to life the gipsy-footed cowboy, manhunter and writer. 347pp, illustrated.