Follow me to hell McNelly's Texas Rangers and the rise of frontier justice

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Bestseller Clavin (coauthor, The Last Hill) sketches in this scrupulous if meandering history the origin story of the Texas Rangers. Beginning in 1821, when Anglo settlers "thought it a good idea to have a sort of militia always ready for future provocations" by local Indigenous tribes, Clavin recounts land skirmishes, cattle raids, Civil War battles, and more. The book's focal point is Leander McNelly, a member of the infamous Sibley Brigade during the Civil War, who famously tricked 400 Union soldiers into surrendering to his unit of 40 Confederates. McNelly's "daring courage and consummate skill" in the Battle of Galveston and other Civil War clashes led to his appointment in 1874 as captain of a Texas Ranger unit in Washington County, Tex. Tasked with ridding the Nueces Strip between the Rio Grande and Nueces rivers of bandits and cattle rustlers, McNelly was renowned for his bravery, cunning, and independent streak; he risked international conflict by leading raids into Mexico, but also helped evolve the Rangers "into the modern police force of today." Though there's plenty of action, McNelly's fascinating character often gets lost in historical minutiae and filler. This saga sags a little too often. (Apr.)

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Review by Library Journal Review

At 5' 5" and 125 pounds, Leander McNelly was an improbable figure for a hero. But as captain of the Texas Rangers in the mid-1870s, he was a legendary fighter who led his unit from the front and never asked of them things he wouldn't do himself. He first became a police officer when Governor Edmund Davis established a Texas State Police force in 1870 and named McNelly as one of four captains. One of McNelly's first assignments was arresting and bringing back his own boss: he had absconded with $38,000. Lack of funds closed the unit, but it was reestablished in 1875 to address widespread cattle rustling, and McNelly was rehired, leading a unit in south Texas in 1875--76. He died the following year at the age of 33. Clavin (Tombstone) knows Western history, but the story he tells here is inconclusive--the Texas Rangers would arrest someone; then the suspect would escape or be let loose--and laying out the backstory for every person introduced slows the narrative repeatedly. Still, Clavin tells a good story. VERDICT Primarily for lovers of Western history.--David Keymer

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A rollicking tale of a Texas lawman and the iron-jawed contingent that rode with him. Before there were the Texas Rangers, writes Clavin, an old hand at popular Western history, there were other rangers, assembled and deputized mostly to kill Native Americans and Mexicans. One early band "were not technically Rangers but pretty much served as such until Stephen Austin gave them a name." As Clavin notes, the Mexicans who first allowed the Anglos to settle in Texas soon came to regret the decision. Whereas they had hoped that the new settlers would constitute a buffer between them and raiding Apaches and Comanches, they saw that the newcomers "were not adhering to Catholicism and continued to own slaves," both violations of Mexican law. The author doesn't soft-pedal the racist ethos surrounding the Rangers, but neither does he paint a heroic portrait of the likes of Travis and Crockett or the free-shooting pacifiers of the borderlands. One most effective of these early groups was a troop led by a Confederate veteran named Leander McNelly, who lived out a long life enforcing the law on the frontier in parallel with more organized police forces until finally being folded into the Texas Rangers in 1874. McNelly had plenty of scrapes and adventures, and he wasn't shy about crossing into Mexico, violating international law, when the occasion suited him. Among the most noir of his bêtes noires was the outlaw John Wesley Hardin, who makes a much more interesting figure overall than McNelly. It took years to bring Hardin, elusive and seemingly impervious to bullets until his last moments, to justice, a story that takes up many pages here. McNelly, for his part, helped shape the Texas Rangers into a formidable force, and, as Clavin notes, he was acknowledged as such by being "a member of the first class inducted into the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame" decades after his death. Fans of the Wild West and its pistol-packin' miscreants will enjoy Clavin's latest. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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