Books like The Friends of Pancho Villa

I picked this one off my shelves last night. Rescued from somewhere. I wanted to pick a western and here it is, a first-person historical fiction tale. Our narrator is casual, relentless and remorseless killer working for "la Revolution" in the service of Pancho Villa. This is the second book about Villa I've read fairly recently, the first being something I can't remember by Winston Groom. Like that book, this one offers up a tossed-off version of what happened to Ambrose Bierce. It's just guessing at this point anyway. The most common theme of the book is the stunning violence. So many prisoners of war(on both sides) wind up being casually murdered. In real life, this became an issue for the American government, which generally supported the revolutionaries like Villa because the conservative governments of Mexico were so awful. Still, according to this Villa was entreated by American officials to go easy on captured soldiers, not that it did much good. Problem is/was that P.O.W.'s, if they are to be kept alive and NOT returned to resume their role as soldiers AGAINST their former captors, need to be fed and housed and guarded. All that takes resources(and the humanitarian will to do it) and Villa didn't have a lot of either. Anyway, more bloodshed tonight I suppose. So far this book is OK in its lightweight accounting of things, but the author/speaker is no Cormac McCarthy(who gets a shout-out in the form of an epigraph). NO doubt, however, that "Blood Meridian" has been the inspiration for a lot of the "realistic" westerns that have been written since it was published.Last night's reading had a lot to do with politics. Villa and Zapata are about to enter Mexico City as co-victors over Carranza. It was all downhill from there for both of them. Both assassinated later on ...Will finish tonight. Zapata got his, and now Villa will meet his maker. Oh, the treachery ... One might be tempted to some sympathy if either of them had been more than glorified bandits and killers. All that violence - ugh!And so to the end of Pancho Villa. Our narrator speaks to us from 1968 - now that's a survivor! Villa enjoyed a fruitful, if rather brief, retirement. In the end his politics, big mouth, and obnoxious/violent personality got the better of him. As I said before, in my opinion he was primarily a gifted and charismatic bandito, the scope of whose activity was greatly expanded by the opportunities of "la Revolution."- good but not great book - certainly not a work of legitimate = 3.5* rounds down to 3*.