In Potshot, Parker had Spenser assemble his own Magnificent Seven, to do gun battle with a band of renegades led by The Preacher. It was fun in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way, but the idea of Spenser as Western hero must have been lodged in Parker's mind, because Gunman's Rhapsody is the story of Wyatt Earp and the Gunfight at the OK Corral. This is not necessarily the key Western myth in American culture, but it is, along with the stories of Jesse James and Billy the Kid, the one which has been adapted most often. The Earp story is many-faceted: his relations with his brothers, and his women; the odd pairing with Doc Holliday; the cast of villains, ranging from the rustling Clantons to the classics-quoting gunman Johnny Ringo, and not least, the politics of Tombstone, the aptly named silver-mine boom town. Earp is eminently adaptable, just think of the films. He's been a sleazy politician (Frank Perry's Doc), a reluctant civiliser (John Ford's My Darling Clementine), a morally ambiguous figure bent on revenge (John Sturges' Hour of the Gun) and a santicmonius bore (Lawrence Kasdan's Wyatt Earp). He's been played by everyone from Walter Huston to Kurt Russell. Mountains of non-fiction books have argued whether he was hero or villain, valiant gunman or self-promoting spin-doctor. So what approach does Parker take? Simple. Earp becomes Spenser, a century early. When you think about it, it makes sense. What is Hawk if not a black, non-consumptive, Doc Holliday? If you saw Dana Delany as Josie Marcus in Tombstone, as Parker surely did, you'd realise she's a pre-Freudian Susan Silverman.
What makes it work, as ever with Parker, is his skill with dialogue; and as usual Earp/Spenser gets most of the last words (though he seems to have a fond spot for Virgil Earp, whose voice sounds suspiciously like Sam Elliott's, who played Virg in the aforementioned Tombstone). This is the story of gangs fighting for domination in a sort of urban environment; and it's also a story of revenge and honour. Parker gives us as good an explanation of Ringo's bizarre death as we're likely to get. You get the sense Wyatt and Spenser might have been happy to compare notes. But I can't see Wyatt copying down the Boston tough-guy's recipes.
