Oregon, 1851. Eli and Charlie Sisters, notorious professional killers, are on their way to California to kill a man named Hermann Kermit Warm. On the way, the brothers have a series of unsettling and violent experiences in the Darwinian landscape of Gold Rush America. Charlie makes money and kills anyone who stands in his way; Eli doubts his vocation and falls in love. And they bicker a lot. Then they get to California, and discover that Warm is an inventor who has come up with a magical formula, which could make all of them very rich. What happens next is utterly gripping, strange and sad. Told in deWitt's darkly comic and arresting style, THE WARM JOB is the kind of Western the Coen Brothers might write - stark, unsettling and with a keen eye for the perversity of human motivation. Like his debut novel ABLUTIONS, THE WARM JOB is a novel about the things you tell yourself in order to be able to continue to live the life you find yourself in, and what happens when those stories no longer work. It is an inventive and strange and beautifully controlled piece of fiction, which shows an exciting expansion of Dewitt's range
I picked up The Sisters Brothers purely because of the fantastic cover. However, I didn't recognise the shapes on the covers at gun-slinging cowboy types, so I was quite surprised when the story started be set in the "wild west" of the Californian gold rush.
Had I known this, I probably would have missed out on this through and through fun and fabulous story of Eli and Charlie, the hired assassins who embark on a journey to finish a "job" and find more than they bargained for on the way.
The relationship between the brothers - which is testing at times - gives the story some depth but doesn't detract from the entertaining episodes that Eli and Charlie seem to tumble into. Actually, the two characters - Eli trying to calm down both his and his brother's temper, and Charlie stirring things up a bit- balance out nicely and add to the galloping pace.
Best read while listening to the Magnificent Seven soundtrack.
Warning: Do not read any passages of this book aloud while in the ear-shot of a horse. It will not thank you.
