The Fourth Durango

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Ross Thomas inhabited a world of romantic cynics-people who made no bones about living on the shady side of the street but who wouldn’t tolerate true malevolence. Bribery, sure, blackmail, yes, but not the murder of innocents. Sometimes he killed off a beloved hero, but good did triumph in a way it usually doesn’t in the world the rest of us live in.

In person Thomas seemed like Clark Kent-his mild, unassuming manner concealed a pen of steel. In fact, like Clark Kent, Ross Thomas did start his writing life as a reporter. He was a sports journalist before serving with the U.S. infantry in the Philippines during World War II; at war’s end he was a diplomatic correspondent for the Armed Forces Network, in Bonn and Washington. He worked in public relations and then turned his hand to managing election campaigns.

Thomas’s clients were as odd a collection as ever existed outside the pages of one of his own novels: a Nigerian tribal chief trying to become the country’s first post-colonial prime minister (the man lost and spent a lot of years in prison); the president of the National Farmers Union, running for re-election (he also lost but didn’t do time); and George McGovern.

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