The Doctor and the Kid

September 19, 2011
Resnick follows the first Weird West Tale, 2010’s The Buntline Special, with another dime-novel adventure featuring famous gunslinger Doc Holliday. Holliday is all set to retire to the sanatorium and die of consumption until a desire to impress Oscar Wilde leads him to make a terrible mistake at the gambling table. Broke, Holliday must recoup his funds with his guns. Seeking the bounty on Billy the Kid, the self-deprecating Holliday teams up with Thomas Edison and Ned Buntline to pit their science against the magic of the Indians while avoiding feminine wiles and local law enforcement. Resnick has done his research, and fast guns, fast plotting, and a comfortably entertaining writing style make this novel a rollicking Western with a steampunk tweak.

Starred review from December 1, 2011
Veteran sf and fantasy author Resnick follows his alternate-history western, The Buntline Special (2010), with an equally enticing adventure. Doc Holliday, consumptive dentist and reluctant shootist (nobody really says gunslinger ), has gambled away his nest egg, the money he'd set aside so he could live out his remaining years in the relative comfort of a sanitarium. Needing some quick cash, he decides to try his hand at bounty hunting, and since he needs a lot of money, he figures he might as well go for a big bounty, the one on Billy the Kid. Problem is, Billy is under the protection of Indian medicine man Hook Nose and can't be killed. Grudgingly, Doc makes a deal with Geronimo, whose own powerful magic is keeping American expansion stalled at the Mississippi (Geronimo was a key villain in The Buntline Special). Young Tom Edison, who has already invented the electric light and robotic, um, women of easy virtue, goes to work, trying to invent, with the assistance of Ned Buntline, who can build pretty much anything (mostly out of brass), a device powerful enough to nullify Hook Nose's magic. A mad mixture of steampunk and magic set in an alternate Wild West, this is hugely entertaining and should please fans of sf and westerns.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)