"Incident at Twenty-Mile" is a "Western with a difference", and unless I miss my guess, it was intended (at least in part) as a spoof. "Trevanian" is one of four or five pen-names of Rodney Whitaker (b. 1931), a faculty member in film and drama who held positions at the UT Austin, Bucknell University, and Emerson College, among other institutions. The author claimed that his early successes in popular fiction (The Eiger Sanction", "The Loo Sanction") in the early 1970s to be parodies of the James Bond variety. The author hid his identify for many years, and hired stand-ins to act as him in interviews and book-signings. "Incident at Twenty-Mile" was published in 1998, a full 15 years after Whittaker’s previous work of fiction, and well after he had retired from academia.

The tale takes place in a Wyoming town called "Twenty-Mile", so named because it is twenty miles away from a spot twenty-miles away. It exists to support a local silver mine -- accessible only by a small-gauge railway – and where the miners come to spend their earnings, on alcohol and prostitutes. Among the notable residents of the town are a preacher, a gambler, a Jewish merchant, a Swedish hotelkeeper, a storekeeper and his beautiful, virginal daughter, and two stable-hands, one gay and the other black. And then there are the prostitutes at the Traveller's Welcome saloon: Frenchy, ''a tall, lean, yellow-eyed black woman from New Orleans; Chinky, ''a shy Chinese girl who spoke little English''; and Queeny, ''a loud, laughing, sloshy-breasted old Irishwoman who was said to be able to drink anything that didn't eat the bottom out of a glass before she got to it.'' A cheerful young drifter, Matthew Dubchek comes to town, armed with an ancient blunderbuss that hasn’t been fired in years. He fantasizes about becoming the town’s marshall, in emulation of “The Ringo Kid”, a fictional hero of a series of books that he reads.

A criminally insane, psychotic killer named Lieder (who has broken out of jail in Laramie) descends on the town with his two demented sidekicks. Lieder is both sadistic and racist, and spouts diatribes about how the country is being taken over by immigrants of inferior races. He and his cronies proceed to terrorize the town – humiliating, raping, torturing, and killing; and given that he has confiscated the residents’ weapons, the townfolk won’t stand up to him. The town’s only hope lies with Matthew, who is permitted to keep his enormous rifle on the grounds that the ancient weapon can’t fire since no ammunition can fit it. Sure enough, Matthew manages to save the town with the aid of his weapon, and briefly steps into the self- appointed role of marshall – until, that is, the resistance of the town folk and the miners leads him to descend into mental collapse.

In an extended addendum, the author introduces himself (still as “Trevanian”) and claims that his story is based on actual events. He purports to have gathered the information from an unpublished manuscript, old newspaper clippings, and extensive on-sight investigation. The author also offers a long cast list, giving information (dates of birth, ultimate fates) of the various individuals that populate his tale -- as if information about such non-entities was available to be gathered . A little on-line investigation reveals no evidence that any of the individuals or events were real. As one example, consider the fictional character “The Ringo Kid”, whom protagonist Matthew patterned his career after, and whose name is carved on Matthew’s tombstone. “The Ringo Kid” actually was a comic book character invented in the 1950s, in works reprinted in the 1970s.

The large number of reviewers at Amazon and GoodReads who have taken the story as true have (I believe) been taken in. In fact only a few published book reviews express any suspicion that the author was promulgating yet another “Western” myth.

How do I rate a book like this? In imagination, it ranks highly. However, in enjoyment value, I found the violence, cruelty, and vile actions of the insane villains nearly too much to take. For the latter reason, I rate it as only two stars, but add another star in appreciation of the author's elaborate joke, one that has fooled nearly all of his devoted readers.

Note: Finally a comment on the supposedly facetious nature of the books that Whitaker published under the pseudonym Trevanian. Both "The Eiger Sanction" and "The Loo Sanction" are quite believable as works of suspense fiction. After all, the former was made into an excellent movie. Thus, I suspect that the author's claim that these works were parodies of the genre were his way of protecting himself, should his identity become known, as he bounced around between academic institutions. If so, they may have been provided as assurance that he didn't take the works seriously and that others ought not use them to judge his academic credentials. Accordingly, "Incident at Twenty-Mile" -- offered as reality-based historical fiction -- may have been his first real spoof. This would make the novel a double joke since few in his audience would realize that after years of claiming to be publishing spoofs and parodies, he finally had actually done so. ( )

It's difficult to know just how to classify this book at first glance. Trevanian, pseudonym for a Rodnet Whitaker, former professor at the University of Texas, insists all his books are spoofs. But the book is clearly much more than just a send-up of the classic Western revenge novel.

The "bad guy," Lieder, resembles that Lecter creep from the movie. He escapes from the "moonberry" (nuthouse) section at a maximum-security prison by persuading the guard that he has undergone an intense religious conversion. His goal is to form a militia to fight off what he believes is an international conspiracy to people America with immigrants. Shades of black U.N. helicopters. He was the "baddest of the bad," a brilliant maniac who had maimed whole families in the cause of electing William Jennings Bryan — he never kills, to avoid the death penalty. He and his fellow escapees descend on Twenty-Mile to steal a silver shipment that passes through the town weekly — he doesn‘t realize it‘s in the form of ore — in order to subsidize his movement.
Twenty-Mile — so-called because it was twenty miles from a spot twenty miles away — is a dying town populated by a host of Western stereotypes. One prostitute is French, "a tall, lean, yellow-eyed black woman from New Orleans." Some of the language is clearly the author having a good time: "A susurrus [sic:] scurry of sliding scree drew his attention to three men climbing up the slope toward him." And one of the characters delights in telling everyone how the United States was imperialistic in its actions during the Spanish-American War. Clearly the author was not a fan of Theodore Roosevelt, noting the Rough Rider made sure there were plenty of photographers handy when he made his charge, then taking his whole company back to New York, where the real enemies, malaria, disease and bad water, couldn't follow.

An epilogue reveals the incident is based on a real event. Trevanian discovered the story almost by accident. He did a considerable amount of research, finally discovering most of the fine points in old newspapers of a neighboring town, Destiny. In fact, it's reading the details of what happened to the very real characters in the book that places the entire story in context. For example, we learn why the train returned almost immediately after dropping off the miners at Twenty-Mile, and why the town became completely deserted within a week after the events described in the book.

Trevanian has written a masterful re-creation of an extraordinary event in the history of the West that surpasses a Louis L'Amour novel. ( )

My husband liked this a lot more than I did but, as always, a great story. ( )