Houston and the fictional town of Thalia recur frequently as settings in McMurtry's first six , novels, and some of the same characters, Emma Horton, Patsy Carpenter, and Danny Deck, reappear in several books. He has developed his stories in a number of different modes, sometimes striving for a tightly controlled single action, at times aiming for a looser, open-ended flow; sometimes seeing the action through the eyes of a sober, serious youngster, at times withdrawing to a more elevated, omniscient, and ultimately comic perspective. His first novel, Horseman, Pass By (1961), is carefully controlled and economical: the central event, the discovery of hoof-and-mouth disease among cattle on Homer Bannon's ranch, develops inexorably toward the eventual destruction of the cattle, and with them Homer's will to live. The story is narrated by Homer's grandson Lonnie, who is clearly in the tradition of Huck Finn, discerning much of the falseness around him, unwilling to corrupt himself. Lonnie's voice as a narrator can be heard in his comments on Homer Bannon's funeral: "They had put paint on him, like a woman wears, red paint.
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