Hunter's Trap

by C. W. Smith

Overview

In Hunter’s Trap, Smith’s fifth novel, he creates a brooding tale of psychological suspense set on the film noir landscape of James M. Cain and Jim Thompson. On the night of the vernal equniox 1930, Wilbur Smythe (a.k.a. Will Hunter) embarks on a plan to avenge the deaths of his wife and his employer, a wealthy Kiowa, both murdered by a banker greedy for the Kiowa’s oil money.

A twentieth-century “western” blended with elements of Greek tragedy, Hunter’s Trap explores the textures of place and time, collision of cultures, and the thin margin between good and evil in members of the human family. Hunter’s Trap is a literary page turner that repays its readers from the first page to the last.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780875651774
Publisher:	Texas Christian University Press
Publication date:	04/01/1997
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

C. W. Smith is the author of the novels Thin Men of Haddam, Country Music, The Vestal Virgin Room, and Buffalo Nickel as well as a collection of short stories—Letters from the Horse Latitudes—and the memoir, Uncle Dad. He is professor of English at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Editorial Reviews

It's an eye for an eyeobsessive hatred, relentless pursuit and coldblooded revenge for irrevocable lossin this hypnotic sequel to Smith's highly praised 1989 western, Buffalo Nickel. That novel was enhanced by insight into the halting assimilation of Native Americans into modern society in the early 20th century. Here, Smith constructs a neo-western psychodrama as he revisits secondary characters from Buffalo Nickel to bring full circle an unscrupulous banker's murderous scheme to rob an oil-rich Native American of his birthright. Just months after the death of David Copperfield, the young Kiowa oil baron turned "Hollywood movie Indian,'' his assistant, Wilbur Smyth (aka Will Hunter), comes to El Paso to avenge the loss of his wife, Babette, who also died in the explosion of Copperfield's sailboat. Hunter locates the banker's hired assassin, then begins to stalk and seduce the banker's 17-year-old daughter, Sissy, planning to take her hostage, torture and kill her in retribution. The complex plot gradually unfolds against the divergent cultures of Oklahoma and Texas oil country, the Mexican border town of Juarez and Hollywood. during the Roaring Twenties. Shadowy images of good and evil, undercurrents of bigotry, greed and betrayal emerge from the loosely linked vignettes that make up the narrative. Hunter's rage contrasts with Sissy Kale's childlike vulnerability, even as she is determined to be treated as a mature woman. Smith falls somewhat short of his ambitions. He sometimes fumbles control of the narrative voice and the fractured timeline. Once the plot comes into focus, however, it moves inexorably to a stunning irony on the final page. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Jim Thompson meets Zane Grey in this sequel to Smith's Buffalo Nickel (S. & S., 1989). In 1930, Will Hunter, desolate after the violent deaths of his wife, Bobette, and Copperfield, his Kiowa employer, comes to El Paso, Texas, to avenge them. He intends to kill both men responsible: John Bliss, who carried out the murders, and Kale, a wealthy banker who was greedy to acquire the oil-rich Kiowa's assets. Hunter's plans to kidnap Sissy, Kale's 18-year-old daughter, and hold her hostage before shooting her father go horribly awry in a midnight confrontation at Kale's mansion. Although sections of the novel are intensely moving, they, and the most interesting and fully developed characters (Bobette and Copperfield), appear only in flashbacks. Hunter's responses to Sissy's behavior seem barely credible. In addition, a writing style that locates the novel uneasily between literary and genre fiction makes this a secondary purchase for all but the most comprehensive collections.Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle

Library Journal

Beautifully bitter Depression-era revenge melodrama in which good guys lose, good women die, and virtue's reward is unreasonable tragedy.

More a retelling of Smith's fourth novel (Buffalo Nickel, 1989) than a sequel to it, the story here examines the misguided destiny of Wilbur Smythe, a fatherless man who becomes an amanuensis to David Copperfield, the oil-rich Kiowa Indian hero of Buffalo Nickel. Sensitive to abuses of trust and faith, Wilbur zealously protects Copperfield's business interests but is incapable of keeping Copperfield's femme fatale wife, Laura, from having affairs with Hollywood ne'er-do-wells. Wilbur survives an apparent boating accident that kills his own pregnant wife, Bobette, as well as Copperfield. He suspects foul play when Laura contests her dead husband's will with help from a new business partner, shifty Oklahoma land speculator Bill Kale. Wilbur knows Kale as a sneering swell who made Wilbur's mother his mistress while double-crossing Wilbur's drunken stepfather. Could Kale, who hates Indians, and his loathsome henchman John Bliss, be responsible for additional "accidents" that deprived other well- to-do Indians of their wealth? Without obtaining any proof of their culpability, Wilbur becomes morbidly obsessed with revenge. He gives himself a new name, Will Hunter, and persuades Kale, now living the good life in El Paso, to hire him as a secretary. He then romances Kale's ingenuous daughter, Sissy, who imagines herself eloping with her husband-to-be as Will uses her to entrap her father. Veering between despairing glimpses of empty prairies and gruesome south-of-the-border sex scenes, Smith pushes Faulkner's technique of "portraying the heart in conflict with itself" to gritty excess. Wilbur is a tormented victim and tortured victimizer, and it's his sense of decency that brings on the final catastrophe.

A dark, festering, erotic, Jim Thompsonesque dead-ender that simmers into a brooding bildungsroman, reminiscent of Thomas McGuane's macho head-butting duels but without his loopy humor or wry insights.

Kirkus Reviews