“Bandit Heaven: The Hole-in-the-Wall Gangs and the Final Chapter of the Wild West” by Tom Clavin

c.2024, St. Martin’s Press, $30, 304 pages

You’re home now, safe. Shut the door. Lock it behind you.

The world is entirely outside your four walls, but you can pretend that it’s not. All the danger, all the worries that send you scurrying are far away. Everything you need is home but as in the new book, “Bandit Heaven” by Tom Clavin, you can only hide there for just so long.

Under normal circumstances, John Chapman was an easy-going man.

Easy-going, to a point: Chapman settled down in 1878 on a ranch of his own in northwest Wyoming to raise cattle and horses. Because of that, rustlers like Butch Cassidy were mighty interested in Chapman’s ranch.

Chapman, tired of theft of his animals, was interested in catching Cassidy.

Born to Mormon parents in the spring of 1866, Bob Parker was given the nickname “Butch” as a young man, possibly when he worked for a butcher. Around then, he hung out with a man named Mike Cassidy, who taught Bob to be a good cowboy and a marksman. Bob figured out the cattle rustling thing by himself when he realized how easy it was to siphon off a horse here or a beef there while working for someone else.

At some point in the 1880s, Bob and Mike Cassidy parted ways, and Bob was alone. If, says Clavin, you were a drifter-bandit in Wyoming and Utah back then, there were three main spots for you to hide, all connected by the Outlaw Trail. Bob first landed at Robbers Roost but likely didn’t stay long. He left there to find valid employment in various small, far-flung towns, while also running a grift with other young men and women and stealing horses.

About then, he’d permanently adopted the name Butch Cassidy, a moniker he was known by when he went to prison for stealing a cheap horse. Nearly two years later, Cassidy was released, unrepentant, and he set his sights on one goal: to form a new gang of outlaws.

You say that true crime books are your thing. You devour them by the dozens each year. So why not try some real true crime inside “Bandit Heaven”?

Everything you need in a true crime story is here, as Clavin makes the Wild West seem a little wilder: gunfights, lawlessness, fast chases, murder, and sheriffs who were often ruthless and corrupt. Indeed, you can’t get any truer than crime inside history, told along with Clavin’s wry sense of humor in unexpected places. 

Along the way, you’ll wonder how your forebears ever survived.

That’s all wrapped up in a well-peopled, surprisingly short-timelined tale that includes twists and turns and leaves readers breathlessly hanging because, as Clavin tells it and despite what Hollywood has brought you, the real end of this story is still an unknown.

Readers who love Westerns or history books and those who love the genre on TV will, of course, enjoy this book but try it, if you’re into a good old-fashioned story. For you, “Bandit Heaven” is a pretty safe bet.

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Want more about the Wild West? Then try “Tilghman: The Legendary Lawman and the Woman Who Inspired Him” by Howard Kazanjian and Chris Enss (Two Dot, $28.95), a book with outlaws, hosses, cactus, and the best part of a love of a cowboy.