Armstrong and the Mexican Mystery, a new novel by popular historian and novelist H. W. Crocker III, is a splendid read—especially for, but not only for, conservative-minded readers. A year ago, I reviewed the prequel to this book, Armstrong Rides Again!, in these pages, calling it “the best comic Western you’ll ever read” and one that “will pique the interest of political readers.” This book should earn another, prominent place on your bookshelf.
A little background might be helpful: Armstrong and the Mexican Mystery is the last book in a trilogy that includes Armstrong and Armstrong Rides Again! Whimsical Westerns, the premise is that George Armstrong Custer has miraculously survived the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The books are letters to his wife, Libbie, about his later escapades as an undercover freelance adventurer in the wild West.
Beneath the surface, however, these books are as much about modern American politics and their discontents as they are about any fictional lawman arresting bad hombres and leading foreign armies. Yet political commentary does not stand in the way of an enjoyable book. As a longtime aficionado of Crocker’s books, I have come to expect entertaining page-turners, quixotic tales, and the white heat of political satire.
Crocker is one of the best non-academic (and therefore readable) historians in print. He knows how to score key, nib penned historical points. Crocker’s trilogy is also, Deo Gratias, not weighed down by tedious deliberations on how Custer might have profoundly altered American history if he had survived the Battle of the Little Bighorn. His books are far too funny and unconventional for tenure-track ambitions. Custer in these books is a fabulous character—both heroic and comical—who as Cheers writer Rob Long has rightly noted, “rides through the Old West setting right the wrongs, and setting wrong the rights, in a very funny cascade of satire, history, and even patriotism.”
The first volume in the trilogy, Armstrong, sets the stage in a straightforward way and is a delightful book. In Armstrong Rides Again! most of the political themes expressed by national conservatives (of which Crocker sits at the Round Table) appear metaphorically. They illuminate but don’t get in the way of the novel’s humor or excitement. Set during a civil war in an imagined Latin American country, Armstrong Rides Again! has quite a lot to say to conservatives (to anyone concerned really), who worry about America becoming a banana republic.
The stakes get raised dramatically in this latest volume, Armstrong and the Mexican Mystery. It is a thriller that includes a mysterious gunman (a veteran of the Confederate army, the army of the emperor Maximillian, and the French Foreign Legion); a submarine designed by a papal secret agent; a lost-civilization-turned-criminal-organization; a real-life political upheaval in Mexico; and a few other surprises that will keep any reader’s nightlight on late.
Beneath the adventure, the humor, and steampunk science fiction, you’ll also find political truth. For the villain is a science-worshipping philosopher named Faucon. You will also find some unexpected theological speculations (well, maybe not entirely unexpected from Crocker), including a joke about Saint Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God.
Crocker is a well-known, provocative historian of the American Civil War, the British Empire, and the Catholic Church. His vast research informs his books and adds to the entertainment. They help explain why Custer ends up as, essentially, God’s gun in a war to save Christian Western Civilization, at least temporarily, from a criminal mastermind (Faucon), who seeks to undermine it literally (with tunnels), politically (with co-conspirators, including feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton), and philosophically (pushing an atheistic, Communist, early-Woke agenda).
Well-drawn characters from the earlier books reappear, including the real-life Ambrose Bierce (we get a hint as to why he might have disappeared into Mexico at the end of his life); Custer’s multilingual Indian scout, Billy Jack; the Confederate veteran turned federal agent, Beauregard Gillette; and Rachel, the woman who rescued Custer from the Sioux.
Armstrong and the Mexican Mystery is one of the most entertaining books you can read today; written at a breathless pace with plenty of narrative tension, battles, gunfights, comic interludes, and typical Crockerian surprises that no reader will see coming. If you ever want an author, who will have you laughing, reflecting, and cheering, Harry Crocker is your man.
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