Book Review: Streets of Laredo: a fitting conclusion to the legend

'More worrisome to him was the fact that the joints of his fingers had started to swell, when it got cold. For most of his life he had paid no attention to weather; weather was just there. He never let it interfear with his work or his movements. In time, the weather would always change, but the work wouldn't wait. Now it seemed, weather was interfearing plenty. When the cold struck his wrist joints became swollen, and the joints of his fingers even more so.'

The Streets of Lardeo is the sequal to the Pulitzer Prize winning, Lonesome Dove and where it was the second book published in the series it is actually the fourth book chronologically. The author would follow this novel with   a couple  of prequel novels (Dead Man's Walk and Commanche Moon) that looked at the early days of Captain Call and Augustus McCrae. This book though is a direct sequal to that first novel and not to be confused with that TV movie, Return to Lonesome Dove which is a poor substitute to this, the real conclusion to a beautifully written, painfully realistic western tetralogy . In The Streets of Laredo, McMurtry adds the final strokes to the story of Captain Call, and gives the character a worthy if somewhat depressing send off.

The book is all about growing old - as the Wild West that needed men like Captain Call slowly fades into history then so too do men like Call. McMurtry's westerns have never been about gun blazing heroics, although there are plenty, but more about presenting in as vivid and truthful a fashion as possible the real cruelty of the period. The book opens many years after the events told in Lonesome Dove and when we meet up with Captain Call he is an aged character, someone better suited to spending his days in a rocker whittling away at pieces of wood, but Call doesn't pay much attention to his growing old and has long as he can still do what he sets his mind to he doesn't really think about the changes age brings to his once strong body.


'When she looked out the door of the rooming house and saw Captain Call coming, she had been shocked at how decrepit he looked. Pea Eye had mentioned, casually, that the Captain wasn't as spry as he had been, but the comment hadn't prepared her how the man actually looked.'


Call find himself hired by the railroad to track down the youthful bandit, Joey Garza who is making  a name for himself by striking trains across the Mexican border. Call is teamed up with Brookshire,  a man of the East who is really not suited to the harsh conditions in the West - he spends much of his time either chasing his hat which blows off in the Texas winds or pining for his bossy wife, Kate. Soon they are joined by  yound deputy, Plunkert who is no more suitable that Brookshire and also spends much of his time thinking of the young wife he felt behind in Laredo. Both of these men will lose their wives during the long journey ahead of them.

As well as Joey Garza, Call has to contend with Mox Mox, the manburner, a truly sadistic character who takes great pleasure from burning people alive - man, woman or child it matters not to the runty bandit and some of the scenes concerning the character, although largely told in flashback, are truly stomach churning. It's not all grim though - there are many great character moments. The Indian tracker, Famous Shoes offers some great comedic relief and there is a scene where a group of whores are talking about the first men in their lives that displays the author's incredible skill with character and dialogue.


In the end Captain Call is a legend and the author skilfully weaves his story around several real historical characters, Charles Goodnight, Hanging Huge Roy Bean and John Wesley Harding for instance play major roles in this wonderfully written epic of the old West.

'Call was no longer the man who had lived in the old times; he was no longer even the man who had killed Mox Mox. That man was not the cripple who lived in a granery, in a barn on the Quitaque. That man lived back somewhere in memory, across a canyone, across the Pecos; that man had been blown away, as Brookshire feared he would be, on the plains of time.'


To sum up - a wonderful book that must be read. Absoluely astounding - lyrical, elegiac and jaw dropping!


Like the other books in the series, Streets of Laredo was made into a TV mini-series, this time with James Garner in the role of Captain Call.

Western Book Review - Law of the Gun

Historical data:
(C) 1958 Paul Evan
Macfadden Bartell Books
cover price 50c

I enjoyed this book - it's a traditional style western, well told in a straight forward manner and expertly structured so that it grabs the reader immediately, opening up with El Lobo (the Wolf), a notorious outlaw intervening when a jumped up young man, the kid, is about to be arrested for robbing a Blackjack dealer.

Together the two men flee the town, a posse led by Sheriff Ed Grant in hot pursuit. What follows this thrilling, if hackneyed opening sequence, is a great section with El Lobo and the injured kid (the kid was wounded in their escape) having to survive in the wilderness with their skilled pursuers never too far behind. Once the two men do manage to escape El Lobo discovers that the kid is actually his son, and whilst this seems unlikely it is handled beautifully and flows out of the plot.We also learn that El Lobo and the sheriff have a past that is flushed out as the story unfolds. And even if the book is plotted in the style of a B-western the characters are real, or at least as real as they need to be for the story. El Lobo, for instance, is a magnificent classic western character, the reluctant outlaw facing his own mortality and discovering he wants a different life for the son he never knew he had. We learn of El Lobo's past and come to understand his route to joining the owlhoot trail.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found it a quick easy read - it was also very useful to me as a western writer myself, since it contains some interesting western lore and of course it is a master-class in pacing, a real page turner. I got this book in amongst a job lot of old westerns I bought from a second-hand shop - there are several other titles by the same author among the pile and it won't be too long before I try this author again.

Information about the author is scarce but there is a useful list of his westerns at the author's Fantastic Fiction page. Here's hoping some Archive readers out there can give a little detail about this writer.