Champagne Cowboys by Leon Banks brings back the character Prospero “Whip” Stark. This western genre intertwining with a murder mystery makes for a fun read.
The plot has smugglers trudge through the desert routes and a trio dubbed the Champagne Cowboys who are putting their government-trained military talents to personal use. They think of themselves as modern Robin Hoods, stealing from the rich but giving the money to themselves. After Ash Sterling, the Afghan war hero and admitted leader of the Champagne Cowboys disappears, Whip’s girlfriend, KPIN-TV reporter Roxanne Santa Cruz, asks him to check up on Ash. Unfortunately, Whip finds Ash with a bullet to his head, and so the investigation begins.
This book is something of a sequel. In addition to the main story, the book expands at least two subplots from the first book, one concerning one of Whip’s tenants, seventeen-year-old Opal Sanchez, and another concerning Whip’s quest to prove his father innocent of the murder for which he’s been convicted.
The banter in this novel enhances the plot, keeping the narrative lively and entertaining. The Tucson backdrop of mountains, valleys, and small surrounding towns plays a strong supporting role.
Elise Cooper: How did you come up with the idea for the series?
Leon Banks: I’ve spent years as a newspaper and magazine writer covering stories all over Arizona, including in the backcountry. Editors and agents always say they want stories about underrepresented people. Well, here they are, the tramps and outcasts who find their way to Double Wide, the first in the series
EC: Why a series?
LB: The series is about the desire of all people to belong, somewhere, even if it’s a trailer park in the remote Arizona desert. Making it a series seemed the best way to go. If I could find a readership that liked the idea of the book, liked the particular world in which the events take place, I could build a following based on that. It’s easier than trying to market a different setting and different ideas for each book.
EC: What role does the Tucson setting play in the book?
LB: In the two books in the series, Double Wide and Champagne Cowboys, I try to make Tucson and its surroundings as much a character as Prospero Stark, Roxanne Santa Cruz, and all the others. I know the area well, and there’s much here for a writer to work with. It’s a unique place geographically for sure, with these huge, weird-looking saguaro cacti watching over us from every vantage point, and the Sonoran Desert leads the world in attracting wanderers, dreamers and misfits.
EC: Describe Whip and Santa Cruz and their relationship?
LB: It’s normal in the sense that they are trying to figure each other out. The sex is great, the Mexican food even better, and they maintain separate residences, which allows them separate lives. Roxy wants more, but Stark’s trailer park stands between them. He loves it out there amid the high lonesome and the rattlesnakes. She’s not a big fan of squirrel pie, so they have that to work out. We’ll see what happens.
EC: Describe why you put the new characters in the book?
LB: Stark doesn’t particularly want any of them. He never intended his trailer park to be a shelter. But he’s got a big heart and life sends them his way, so he feels he has no choice. That, too, creates a certain tension that keeps things interesting.
EC: Ash Sterling similar to William Holden?
LB: Ash Sterling as William Holden, I love that! From The Wild Bunch, right? A great movie. I hadn’t thought of Sterling as Holden, but the comparison works for me.
EC: What about Lonesome Eddie Palmer?
LB: Champagne Cowboys introduces some other interesting cats. Lonesome Eddie Palmer is a retired detective, sick, burned out and unhappy, but he was that way when he was on the job as well. I like him because he’s unlovable, but I think the reader will come away understanding him and maybe even liking him. He wants the crimes solved as much as Prospero Stark does, but Stark has to work through all of Eddie’s roadblocks to gain his cooperation. I like that dynamic. It reveals the character of both men.
EC: What about Ozzie Fish?
LB: I love the long-haired bike-riding teenager, Ozzie Fish, too. As he says on meeting someone new, “Oswald Margot Fish, like the ocean, not the card game.” There are plenty of kids out there like Ozzie with no father and an alcoholic mother who is never around. Ozzie has to make do on his own. He finds his way to Double Wide and joins the menagerie.
EC: Why the baseball angle? Are you a fan? Which team?
LB: Yes, I played as a kid and dreamed of making it to the big leagues. But that was never going to happen. I had a certain amount of talent, but not nearly enough, and I grew up in New England, where training is hard. The long winters and frequent rain allow very few consistent training days compared with, say, Florida, California or Texas. I’ve been a Red Sox fan all my life. I used to take the train into town and pay a couple of bucks to sit in the bleachers to watch the Sox play the Yankees, then get on the train back home. With that and getting to school, I spent a lot of time riding the subway. To this day, I carry my wallet in my front pocket as a defense against pickpockets.
EC: What parts of the plot make this a Western story?
LB: I read a piece, can’t remember where, in which Louis L’Amour, one of the 20th century’s most successful writers, expressed his objection to the term ‘Western,’ as a means to categorize his genre. He defined a ‘Western’ as historical fiction that took place on the far side of the Mississippi River, and wondered why The Last of the Mohicans wasn’t called an ‘Eastern?’ He thought literature could take place on either side of the river and bristled at the East Coast bias against anything set on the western side.
EC: Do you agree with him?
LB: About the bias, he was surely right. Plenty of great writing takes place out here that doesn’t get noticed, because the editors and agents who do the buying are so far removed from life here. What’s most interesting to people, all people everywhere, is what’s right outside their window. That’s their world, and that’s what they want to see reflected in books. Same with me. I’m looking out my window now and there’s a big sky, saguaros, and nearby some pretty deep canyons where you can lose yourself for a day or two, or for the rest of your life. So, Louis l’Amour’s point was that a good story is a good story, regardless of the genre name attached to it.
EC: How has your job experience influenced you as a writer?
LB: In every way possible. My work as a newspaper and magazine writer brought me in contact with all kinds of people in all kinds of situations, and all of it comes out one way or another in my copy. One of the reasons I made Roxanne Santa Cruz a TV reporter was because I’m familiar enough with the news business to pull it off. In addition to loving baseball, one of the reasons I made Prospero Stark a former player is because I wrote about baseball for years for a number of publications, including Sports Illustrated.
EC: Why the mystery?
LB: In my years traveling as a reporter, I always carried a mystery novel to read at night, figuring I would write one someday. With that seed in the back of my mind, I’d listen carefully to the people I was interviewing, to identify patterns of speech, certain expressions and ways of putting words together that differ from person to person. Dialogue is crucial in moving the story and revealing character. In Double Wide and Champagne Cowboys, I work hard to make every character sound like themselves, and sound different from every other character.
EC: Next book?
LB: Planning a third of the Double Wide series, planning a noir murder story, dark and dirty, and to round things off, planning a love story set in the West. It’ll have horses and smooching and two opposites who figure it’s doomed from the jump but can’t stop.
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