It is Oregon City in 1851 and the Californian gold rush in full swing. Our narrator is one Eli Sisters who sits outside the mansion of a wealthy entrepreneur referred to only as “the commodore”, waiting for his brother Charlie to emerge to announce the nature of their next murder assignment. Yes, this is the story of two hired killers dispatched on an errand halfway across frontier land America to dispatch their boss’s latest enemy to the afterlife. Eli is kind enough to invite the reader along with them to experience their bizarre journey at first hand. For those with a literary bent the adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza very quickly come to mind. It will be recalled that Sancho was the pot bellied peasant squire who provided the essential common sense and earthy wit that counterbalanced his master’s grand romantic delusions. So it goes similarly with Charlie, the older lead brother and his sibling – except that Charlie is a ruthlessly uncompromising thug, utterly devoid of romantic or any other form of civilising characteristics, who will kill, rape and pillage without a moment’s compunction.

Eli is a more complex person. He has what we may recognise as distinctly human feelings that include qualms of conscience and empathy. He is lonely and yearns for a loving woman. He gives money generously to those who need it more than him, including a young lad whose family travelling west on covered wagons has been wiped out. He is loyal to his injured horse. The reader is made to believe he can do business with Eli if not the cold hearted, cold blooded sibling who, it is hinted, was not always quite as depraved as he now appears. We gradually discover that the brothers are notorious throughout the wild west, that you cross them at your peril. Occasional tender references by Eli to their mother suggest an interesting backstory is eventually to be revealed but in the immediate term the reader will be required to deal with a series of graphically violent killings as the duo cross into Californian gold rush territory proper.

Arriving in San Francisco they discover the target Warm, who they are supposed to kill, has made a pact with Morris, the commodore’s local henchman, and done a runner. The Sisters Brothers access Morris’s diary in which the turncoat explains Warm has invented a foolproof technique for extracting gold from the rivers and the two have gone into partnership. I had been prepared to suspend disbelief up to this point but now the dung beetle of implausibility began to burrow deeply into the narrative. There is no way Morris would have written such a self-recriminating document let alone left it carelessly hanging around like that. More unconvincing still, the brothers, having located Warm’s river encampment, bungle their approach and are lucky not to be killed by Warm who traps them in the sights of a gun. In my view there’s no way such hardened professional hitmen would have mismanaged this simple task against such tenderfoot adversaries.

Anyway before this tale is concluded the reader is going to be subjected to a concoction of horror, sci-fi type fantasy and knockabout comedy – all of which made me feel I had been led up the garden path. The potion invented by Warm to illuminate the presence of gold in the rivers turns out to be highly poisonous, causing the deaths of both him and Morris. Charlie who has gone into business with them loses a hand. I found it all very bloody and very silly. Surely in the period Warm was developing this magic potion he would have realised it had toxic qualities that corroded the flesh? A bunch of Indians suddenly arrive and steal all the gold the men have taken out of the water. Is this then a morality tale about the corrupting consequences of greed? Who knows? Who cares? The Sisters Brothers have come to the end of the road. They beat a hasty retreat back to Oregon and find only blighted buildings and ruined lives on the way. Eli drowns the Commodore in his bath as token revenge for the injury Charlie has suffered during their fantastical wild goose chase. They discover their home has been ransacked and all their money stolen. Finally they set off to visit their widowed mother and Eli remorsefully pledges to her their lives will now be peaceable and hardworking. He is no longer under the thrall of his older sibling. They are equals and, however temporarily, Eli informs us, “removed from all earthly dangers and horrors”. You may call me hard-hearted but I could not have cared less. The Sisters Brothers, The Brothers Sisters, the horses, the whores, the red Indians and especially their creator can all go and fuck themselves for wasting my valuable time. But those readers who take plot contrivances and absurdist flights of fantasy uncritically in their stride may very well be hugely entertained and even moved to tears.

TWO STARS