One of the more entertaining books you’ll read this year is a particularly  gruesome, exceptionally well-written western.   Truly one of those books you can’t put down and likely you won’t be able to forget.

Take one part Coen Bros’ re-boot of  “True Grit”,  add the eloquent vulgarity of   the prematurely departed, “Deadwood”, then a dash of backwoods alchemy and you have “The Sisters Brothers” by James DeWitt.

Eli and Charles Sisters are a notorious pair of sibling assassins making their way along the West Coast in 1851.  The Gold Rush is in full bloom, having turned “thousands of previously intelligent men and women to abandon their families and homes forever.” Eli and Charles are the muscle for ‘The Commodore’, an ornery megalomaniac ruling the territory from up in Oregon City.

At the beginning of the novel, ‘The Commodore’ assigns the boys some nasty business down in Sacramento. They’re to kill a gold prospector named Herman Kermit Warm.  The brothers have no idea why this man has earned the wrath of their employer, but it’s not really their business to worry about such things.

The novel is their vivid and remarkable, pistol-whipped journey.  They engage with the insane, wicked, ruthless and starving. From saloon to whorehouse, deep woods to the wicked streets of the Barbary Coast, the Sisters brothers proceed with deadly determination.

Seen through the eyes of Eli Sisters, who narrates with a mixture of melancholy and laconic repose. He’s a reluctant murderer — preferring to be a shopkeeper — rather than a killer, but it’s the only work he knows and it keeps him close to his brother, which he enjoys. Eli describes their ride toward Sacramento with a deadpan accounting that is at times both humorous and horrifying.

For those who like their fiction soaked in whiskey and blood , this is something you should start reading tonight.  Check out this “book trailer” put out by Harper Collins.