The novel's characters and many elements of its plot are loosely based on actual people and events from Tombstone, Arizona, during the same time period, including Wyatt Earp and the Gunfight at the O.K.

Anticipating the ferocity of rumor that will inevitably surround accounts of the gunfight and wanting to avoid the distrust and resentment of the town, Blaisedell turns himself in for trial in neighboring Bright's City on the charge of murder.

Doctor Wagner, the town physician, is the miners' staunchest advocate, but implores them to organize a union and negotiate peacefully rather than resort to mob violence and sabotage.

At the same time, the Citizens' Committee tries to avert open conflict by formally requesting Warlock's incorporation as the seat of a new county, which would permit them to hire their own full-time sheriff.

Kate Dollar takes an interest in Bud Gannon, seeking to use him to enact her retribution upon Blaisedell and Morgan for orchestrating the murder of her fiancé back in Texas.

[4] Michelle Latiolais, a professor of English at the University of California, Irvine, described Warlock as belonging to the "pantheon of western masterpieces" alongside Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and John Williams's Butcher's Crossing.

"[6] Pynchon praised it for restoring "to the myth of Tombstone its full, mortal, blooded humanity" and for showing "that what is called society, with its law and order, is as frail, as precarious, as flesh and can be snuffed out and assimilated into the desert as easily as a corpse can.