The Texas Wrongers

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It would not surprise me to read that the author this book, Doug J. Swanson, had been found lynched in his living room in Pittsburgh by a renegade band of The Daughters of the Texas Rangers. The book is the historical-heresy equivalent of writing that the Lone Ranger and Tonto were gay lovers and that “Kemo Sabe” translates as “Adorable Bunkmate.” An online reviewer called this book “a hatchet job.” It’s a lot more than that. It’s a hatchet-axe-Bowie knife-bandsaw-switchblade-six gun-Sharps rifle-shotgun-Derringer-poison arrow-arsenic-strychnine-hemlock-curare-hypodermic-crossbow-baseball bat-branding iron-car bomb-job of a book.
Having written a few books myself, I know that the job of a writer is to inform, educate, and entertain the reader, but I also know that it is not the job of a writer to bludgeon the reader into submission with infinite negativity. I stopped reading this book right after murder number 3,042 on page 289 out of 453, totally convinced that the Texas Rangers are ten times worse than the Ku Klux Klan, the Nazis, SPECTRE, the Never-Trumpers, the Communists, and the Muppets combined. Okay, Doug, you’ve made your point, so let me give you some career advice: don’t take that job offer from Texas Tech in Lubbock.