The Lonely Men

I don’t claim to be an expert on the Western novel (as I do with SF and Tolkien). The Lonely Men is the second Louis L’Amour book I’ve read. The first was Hondo, a novelization of the John Wayne movie based on a short story L’Amour wrote. (Read it May of last year but never reviewed it.) And I bestow upon The Lonely Men the same grade I gave Hondo: an A, burned into the side of a heifer with a red-hot branding iron.

I finished the book in four days, but really could’ve done it – wanted to do it, actually – in two, as I buzzed through the second half of the book in one sitting. Given the opportunity, I’d have probably read the whole darn thing in a long afternoon (it was only 160 pages or so). Probably will do so with the next L’Amour Western I pick up.

Anyway, even without knowing his history, based solely on the two books I read, L’Amour is, er, was, a genius in his chosen genre. Every Western trope (I won’t say “cliché”) is to be found in this novel, but the whole thing just flows natural and smooth that you don’t realize you’ve seen or read these things hundreds of times before. The Lonely Men was written in 1969, and he’d been writing novels for two decades at this point, so perhaps they weren’t as trope-ish as they seem nowadays. There’s –

The taciturn, manly hero

An Apache stagecoach ambush

Evil spinster woman with evil spinsterish plans

Quick-draw showdown in the saloon

Rescuing the stolen children from marauding Apaches

The Spanish don with his fine cigars and library of leather-bound books

Hired killers with cool names (“Arch Haddon”)

The Apache whose life you spare is actually the chief in whom your life depends later on

A tutorial on how to survive and track / not be tracked in the desert

And more!

Honestly, I loved it. I ate it up. The pages flew by and the story pulled me in. A despite my good-natured razzing at all these tropes and stereotypes and whatnot, it was actually hard to predict what would happen. Even the final scene, which seemed unnecessarily added on, out of nowhere became an awesome serving of comeuppance upon the bad guys (and girl) who somehow eluded justice at the hands of our lonely hero only a few pages earlier.

The Lonely Men is actually part of a long running series of L’Amour’s that follows the generations of the pioneering Sackett family. There are close to twenty books in all, with setting ranging from the 1600s and all the way up to the end of the 19th century. This one takes place ten or so years after the Civil War; the taciturn, manly hero “Tell Sackett” actually served in the Army of the Potomac and fought at Shiloh and The Wilderness.

Have other Westerns to check out now, but I will pick up good quality L’Amours as I come across them.