For the 2001 novel by Wilbur Smith, see Warlock (2001 novel)

Warlock (2001 novel)

Warlock is a novel by author Wilbur Smith first published in 2001. It is part of a series of novels by Smith set to ancient Egypt and follows the fate of the Egyptian Kingdom through the eyes of Taita, a multi-talented and highly skilled eunuch slave....

For the 1959 film adaptation of this novel starring Henry Fonda, see Warlock (1959 film)

Warlock (1959 film)

Warlock is a 1959 film, released by Twentieth Century Fox and shot in DeLuxe Color and CinemaScope. It is a Western adapted from the novel by Oakley Hall...

Warlock is an American western

Western fiction

Western fiction is a genre of literature set in the American Old West frontier and typically set from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century. Well-known writers of Western fiction include Zane Grey from the early 1900s and Louis L'Amour from the mid 20th century...

 novel by author Oakley Hall

Oakley Hall

Oakley Maxwell Hall was an American novelist. He was born in San Diego, California, graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and served in the Marines during World War II. Some of his mysteries were published under the pen names "O.M...

 first published in 1958.

The novel is loosely based on characters and events that took place in the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona

Tombstone, Arizona

Tombstone is a city in Cochise County, Arizona, United States, founded in 1879 by Ed Schieffelin in what was then Pima County, Arizona Territory. It was one of the last wide-open frontier boomtowns in the American Old West. From about 1877 to 1890, the town's mines produced USD $40 to $85 million...

.

Hall's most famous novel, Warlock was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

 in 1958. Writer Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...

 praised it for restoring "to the myth of Tombstone its full, mortal, blooded humanity" and showing "that what is called society, with its law and order, is as frail, as precarious, as flesh and can be snuffed out and assimilated into the desert as easily as a corpse can. It is the deep sensitivity to abysses that makes Warlock one of our best American novels."

In 1959, it was made into a film, also called Warlock

Warlock (1959 film)

Warlock is a 1959 film, released by Twentieth Century Fox and shot in DeLuxe Color and CinemaScope. It is a Western adapted from the novel by Oakley Hall...

, starring Henry Fonda

Henry Fonda

Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American film and stage actor.Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins...

.

Plot

Oakley Hall's Warlock is about the fictional frontier boomtown

Boomtown

A boomtown is a community that experiences sudden and rapid population and economic growth. The growth is normally attributed to the nearby discovery of a precious resource such as gold, silver, or oil, although the term can also be applied to communities growing very rapidly for different reasons,...

of Warlock and its residents' attempts to keep the peace. In the novel, after escalating violence in the town, a group of citizens form a committee to determine a course of action against criminal cowboys and cattle rustlers. They decide to hire a gunslinger from Texas named Clay Blaisedell, and although things go smoothly at first, the morality of life in the legal no-man's-land becomes even more ambiguous.