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247 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1940
unwavering choice for the year’s finest first novel. It has many of the elements of an old-fashioned horse opera – monosyllabic cowpunchers, cattle rustlers, a Mae West lady, barroom brawls, shootings, lynchings, a villainous Mexican. But it bears about the same relation to an ordinary western that The Maltese Falcon does to a hack detective story. Not to put a fine point on it, I think it’s sort of what you might call a masterpiece.