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When Elmore Leonard was just starting out as a writer, a man could make a living writing Westerns, especially if he was good at it--and Elmore Leonard was one of the best. In his Western novels, you can see the earliest traces of themes that would emerge in his contemporary crime novels. Although sheriffs and cavalry men look a little different than cops and G-men, Leonard's outlaws, bounty hunters, and mercenaries are the same in both worlds: tough and determined because they know that their lives depend on presence of mind and skillful execution of the task at hand, as The Bounty Hunters and Gunsights reveal. And Leonard's prose is even more stripped down than usual, reduced to the bare essentials of plot and character. The reader's told exactly what he or she needs to know, and not one bit of information more. Of the three novels reprinted here (plus the other five in Western Roundup #2 and Western Roundup #3), Forty Lashes Less One is something of an anomaly. It's set in the Yuma Territorial Prison, sure, but the year is 1909. Eventually, it becomes clear that what we're dealing with here is actually a prison-break novel in which at least half a dozen factions are playing off each other, with two men at the center: Harold Jackson and Raymond San Carlos, the only two nonwhite convicts, who get put through a grueling physical regimen by a missionary warden who thinks it'll help them develop self-esteem. With its multiple perspectives and serpentine plot twists, this is ultimately as good an escape story as Out of Sight--if not better. --Ron Hogan
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