There are very few instances where to compare a book to a television series is flattering to the book – but there have been a handful of truly wonderful pieces of television made in the last 15 years that any author would aspire to have his work compared with: The Sopranos, The Wire, Six Feet Under. Oh, and Deadwood, which for three series was the dirtiest, meanest, sweariest programme on TV, completely redefining our expectations of the Western from cowboys and indians and refocusing it on pimps, prostitutes, opium dealers, cut-throats and, once in a while, an honest man. It’s this territory that successful playwright Chris Hannan has chosen to explore in his debut novel, a picaresque journey in the company of nineteen year-old ‘flash-girl’ and opium addict Dol McQueen.

The missy of the title is slang for the tincture of opium that Dol necks down with alarming regularity – but opium is also central to the plot. En route to a booming silver town from San Fransisco, in the company of friends and fellow flash-girls Sadie, Ness and Cordelia, Dol inadvertently stops a pimp from shooting himself. It quickly becomes apparent that his suicide bid was prompted by the vast fortune in unrefined opium that the pimp, Pontius, stole from unforgiving crime kingpins back in ‘Frisco. From this point on, it seems the fortunes of Dol and that box of missy are unavoidably intertwined.

Dol is a sassy narrator indeed, with wisdom beyond her tender years, a clear-eyed view of her own shortcomings and a searing turn of phrase. Her apparent strength, her veneer, conceals a vulnerability born of the way her mother treated her as a child, abandoning her sometimes , pretending not to know her at others. Her mother is still in her life now, a lush, but more than that, a fascinating and magnetic character with a knack for stealing the show. However Dol acts towards her, it seems to make no difference, but she is unable to walk away – chasing after her mother, trying to develop a relationship, is Dol’s real cause in life.

Dol doesn’t seem to be a character who really thinks thing through, but once Pontius forces her to hold the opium for him, she is desperate to find a way to take the money and run. She cultivates the local police chief, even starting to consider the possibility that he is falling in love with her (which you feel she might welcome), and eventually, with her companions (including her mother), hires a wagon and mules and sets off in to the desert to where Pontius and his booty have been dumped. There they are preyed on by Indians and get themselves in to a generally sorry state. Ultimately, Dol’s past actions and attitudes come home to roost and she discovers that her behaviour has alienated those she believed to be friends.

Narrated by a classic and irripressible anti-heroine, Missy is an enjoyable romp through the real Old West, through the eyes of one of the many classes of people who were exploited and abused. While Dol is not always easy to like, she is impossible not to admire, and her eventual epiphany, and the redemption that is promises, is a satisfying end to a very impressive debut novel.

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