BROOKS, Bill 1943-

PERSONAL: Born 1943.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Tor/Forge, 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010.

CAREER: Author.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

The Badmen, Walker (New York, NY), 1992.

Buscadero M. Evans and Company (New York, NY), 1993.

Return to No Man's Land, Dell (New York, NY), 2000.

The Stone Garden: The Epic Life of Billy the Kid, Forge (New York, NY), 2001.

Pretty Boy, Forge (New York, NY), 2003.

Law for Hire: Protecting Hickok, Forge (New York, NY), 2003.

Bonnie and Clyde: A Love Story, Forge (New York, NY), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: After writing several conventional westerns, Bill Brooks began mining the legends of notorious modern villains for subject matter. In 2001 he published The Stone Garden: The Epic Life of Billy the Kid. This historical novel posits that sheriff Pat Garrett did not shoot Billy at Pete Maxwell's ranch as legend has it. Instead, Garrett covers up his mistake, and Billy and his lover, Manuella, live to old age under an assumed name. In journal entries by Billy and Manuella, the outlaws recount their stories in what a Publishers Weekly reviewer described as a "well-crafted tale . . . alive with drama [and] biting wit." Booklist critic Wes Lukowsky also praised the novel, calling it "one of the most inventive, moving, and memorable" westerns he had read in a long time.

While Billy the Kid is a nineteenth-century outlaw, Brooks's next criminal to receive novelistic treatment was Charley "Pretty Boy" Floyd, a legend of America's Great Depression years. Brooks provides an interior life for Pretty Boy while he is dying in an Oklahoma field. People who knew and even loved the famous outlaw weigh in with their opinions about him as he slowly bleeds to death. This novel caught the attention of critics, among them Booklist reviewer Lukowsky, who praised Brooks's "poetic eloquence . . . stunning prose and vivid imagination." Less enthusiastic was a Publishers Weekly contributor who noted, "Brooks handles the pulpy material with wit and vigor, though he endows it with emotional turgidity."

Brooks turns his attention to outlaw couple Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde: A Love Story. As a Kirkus Reviews contributor noted, in his "strangely charming" biography Brooks gives a new interpretation to the myth of the infamous duo. According to a Publishers Weekly reviewer, this is a "lyrical retelling" told in "smooth prose" and imbued with a sense of foreboding. Delving into the personalities of the outlaws, Brooks provides readers with "entirely new and fascinating dimensions to their legends," concluded Lukowsky in Booklist.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, June 1, 2001, Wes Lukowsky, review of TheStone Garden: The Epic Life of Billy the Kid, p. 1835; May 15, 2003, Wes Lukowsky, review of Pretty Boy, p. 1637; January 1, 2004, Wes Lukowsky, review of Bonnie and Clyde: A Love Story, p. 818.

Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2003, review of Bonnie and Clyde, p. 1408.

Publishers Weekly, May 21, 2001, review of The StoneGarden, p. 78; July 14, 2003, review of Pretty Boy, p. 55; December 22, 2003, review of Bonnie and Clyde, p. 38.*