the Kid. Billy - Billy the Kid: the endless ride

In the last three decades, scholarship about Billy has shaken off its pulp origins and become professional, the three best books, in my view, being Robert M. Utleys Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life (1989), Frederick Nolans The West of Billy the Kid (1998), and now Michael Walliss Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride . Michael Wallis does a scrupulous and persuasive sifting of the evidence about Billys life and activities.

Larry McMurtry, New York Review of Books

Meticulously cutting a path through the minefield of Billy-the-Kid mythology, Michael Wallis has given us a story that is at once accurate, nuanced, and a very good read.

Linda Gordon, author of The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction

Research became a pleasure reading Michael Walliss books about Pretty Boy Floyd and the Oklahoma oil barons for one of my novels. I couldnt wait to read Walliss Billy the Kid , prompted by the authors scholarship and readable style. Following Walliss search for the real Billy the Kid is a fascinating experience.

Elmore Leonard

Michael Walliss Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride pursues his life and legend as doggedly as Pat Garrett once chased the real Billy, and with drastically different results: Garrett ended up killing Billy while Mr. Wallis becomes the first biographer to bring him to life. Much more than previous Billy the Kid chroniclersMr. Wallis, a veteran chronicler of the Wild West, has succeeded in filling in the background surrounding the enigmatic Billy.

Allen Barra, New York Sun

This is a short book for a short life, but it is well researched and illustrated. Packed with great story telling, evocative descriptions of the tough lives led and fast flowing but detailed summaries of the shoot-outs, the cattle rustling and the horse stealing, Wallis takes you back into a real world that the film-makers only occasionally try to recreate.

Andrew Dodgson, Tribune (UK)

Actually, this might be the best Billy the Kid book to date. People who have avoided reading nonfiction about the New Mexico badman because they suspect a lot of what was written about him never was true (Hollywood is not guiltless in this regard) can rest easy in the pages of the endless ride. Oklahoma author Michael Wallis has rounded up just about everything the more responsible observers have written about Billys life and fashioned an engaging narrative of all the arguments without buying into the obvious examples of bias.

Fritz Thompson, Albuquerque Journal

In this objective, non-sensationalistic biography of legendary outlaw Billy the Kid, historian Wallispainstakingly sifts fact from fiction.

Kirkus Reviews

This well-written and engaging biography is aimed primarily at general readers interested in the West and provides a clear, concise, and reliable account of Billy; Wallis is careful not to make his story so complicated that it confuses readers.

Library Journal

Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride is well documented and researched. Author Michael Wallis provides much needed background on Billys beginningsomething most writers ignore. In so doing, we learn more about the young man who would become a historic personality.

Norm Rourke, Oklahoma News Weekly

Unless an unexpected cache of Billy the Kid documents is unearthed, this book will likely be the definitive work on the outlaw.

Ron Warnick, Route 66 News

[A] sympathetic yet authoritative biography of one of the most notorious figures ever to come out of the Wild West.

Glasgow Herald