The Long Night of Winchell Dear

By: Robert James Waller

Narrated by: Richard McGonagle

The steady tick of an aged Regulator wall clock and the squeak of an overhead fan turning slowly are soft but insistent, counting down the night, while the high desert thrums like a half-remembered Victrola song. The sounds are below the consciousness of Winchell Dear, an old-time gambler, a Texas poker player on the southern circuit, as he waits for something . . . something vague that his life of chance tells him is evil and moving his way.

In Diablo Canyon, a distant part of Winchell Dear’s ranch, Peter Long Grass squats by a campfire, contemplating the profile he saw moving along the ridge of Guapa Mountain an hour ago, thinking about the gambler’s housekeeper, Sonia Dominguez, about the small, quiet world he has fashioned far from civilization and what undefined presence might now be threatening it. He gathers his tools and begins to run across the desert floor.

And boring toward all of them is a cream-colored Lincoln Continental with two men aboard. Traveling from Los Angeles on a mission they’ve been given, they are professionals, cool and implacable at the start, but becoming steadily more confused by the strange landscape they are passing through. Forty minutes from their task, they ready themselves, while a kitchen wall clock ticks its way through the long night of Winchell Dear.

The Long Night of Winchell Dear finds master storyteller Robert James Waller at his best as he takes us into the shadowy world of high-stakes poker fought in the back rooms of Amarillo and Little Rock, and headlong toward the story’s stunning finale of chaotic terror, where an unexpected hero emerges.©2006 Robert James Waller; (P)2006 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Great descriptions of the desert

Really cool, detailed slow moving story about several characters that come together in one swift finale.

If you loved no country for old men, then this is a good one.

superb

great road story. another Waller work with multi threads. wish it were longer. want more

A Movie I'd like to see

I first listened to Winchell Dear from a copy I got from the library. I liked it so much I downloaded it from Audible. I thought somebody should make a movie. Probably would only need about six really good professionals. The narrator is excellent. You see the gamblers on the trains and in the smoke filled bars. Dangerous men living on the edge but with a certain honor within the fraternity. In the subtext there are two professional gunmen who are an intricate part of the plot. It's great stuff for about twelve bucks from audible. Download it.I think you'll like it. You might even start to wonder about who might play Winchell and who they might cast as the two gunmen.
Donzers