With These Hands

Rating:
Summary: L'Amour isn't just about westerns
Review: I bought "With These Hands" on a whim during a trip to a local store. For some time I have had the idea floating around the periphery of my mind to actually read something, anything, from Louis L'Amour. He is immensely popular through his western themed books, most of which are still in print. The back cover of this book says there are 270 million of his books floating around out there. Can you imagine? That blows most of the big boys out of the water. With that knowledge firmly embedded in my mind, I bought "With These Hands" and gave it a whirl. What surprised me about this collection of short stories is that only one is a western. The rest of the stories are highly charged action tales about boxing, crime noir, or WWII. It seems that L'Amour wrote most of these stories years ago for the pulp magazines at the start of his writing career.

The first thing to realize about these stories is that they are not complex tales with sophisticated character development or multi-leveled plots. That is not to say that the underlying ideas of the stories are crude or undeveloped because each story does flow from an interesting theme. What L'Amour gives his readers is unrelenting action delivered with crisp dialogue and a minimum of words. Action stalks through each of these stories like a beast on a rampage. Teeth rocket out of mouths, noses are pulped, gunfire crackles, and bodies fall like rain. Not surprisingly, the boxing stories contain the most descriptive passages of violence. But all of the stories deliver a maximum level of entertainment to those readers looking for action heavy fiction.

The most surprising realization with these stories is that L'Amour does an excellent job writing crime noir yarns. Arguably the best one included here is "Corpse on the Carpet." In this slangy, gritty tale, an ex-boxer named Kipling Morgan happens to show up at a bar at the wrong (or right, depending on what perspective you take) time. He witnesses a smashingly beautiful woman decked out in expensive jewelry pick up a young guy and leave. Intrigued yet concerned that something isn't quite right with this scene, Kip follows the two across town. When our ex-boxer realizes it is a set-up to shake down the guy for money, he steps in and saves the guy from a serious beating. There is no happy ending at this point, as Kip continues to investigate the suspicious events concerning the woman. What follows is the discovery of a murder, a kidnapping, a gang of dangerous thugs on the lam, and fistfights and shootouts. "Corpse on the Carpet" is everything a great short story should be in this genre. It easily matches up with Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op stories.

The several boxing tales in this collection came about from L'Amour's own career as a boxer (!). There is always a little hook in each story to serve as background leading up to the showdown in the ring, such as a boxer seeking revenge (Gloves for a Tiger), or a boxer who sees his victories in a dream (Dream Fighter). The action is where it's at, though. L'Amour mimics a ringside announcer with his blow by blow descriptions of fighters beating each other into hamburger. But it is in these boxing tales that the biggest problem with this collection is most apparent: the author has the annoying tendency to use exclamation marks to the point of distraction. Nearly every sentence describing the fights has one at the end of the sentence, and it gives the story a sometimes irritatingly adolescent atmosphere.

Then there are the war stories, usually centered on an aviator or the captain of a supply ship. Whether dealing with pirates taking advantage of the war to ply their trade (Pirates of the Sky), or heading out on a secret mission in the heart of wartime Japan (Flight to Entebu), L'Amour always gives us a hero, with a glint in his eye and a jaw of steel, to win the day. Expect to see aerial combat, hand-to-hand combat, double-crossing treachery, and high body counts in these war tales.

The odd story out, and the one used for the title of this collection, is strikingly similar to something Jack London would write. In "With These Hands," a plane crash in snow clogged mountains forces the lone surviving passenger, an oil company executive, to reassess his conceptions about life. This story is a real "man vs. nature" tale, with the executive forced to build shelter, hunt game, keep a fire going, and constantly be on the lookout for rescue planes while he tries to stay alive. "With These Hands" is definitely different from the other stories in the collections, but it is just as entertaining as the rest.

"With These Hands" is a fun collection of short stories that are great for passing a few hours. I expect to read a few more of these L'Amour books during the next few months since I do like to read action stories that don't require a lot of thought from time to time. L'Amour died in 1988, but these collections assembled by his family continue to appear with some regularity. Let's hope they keep finding more lost L'Amour treasures.

Rating:
Summary: A great book of short stories
Review: This is a great compilation of stories. What makes it great is that they are not all the same. They jump from a murder mystery to a boxing story to a story of survival. Give it a try you probably won't be disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: NOT AGAIN!
Review: When I read May There Be A Road by Louis L'Amour I hoped that it would bomb so badly that we wouldn't have to endure anything like it again. Unfortunately the heirs of the late, great western story teller apparently have not tired of doing their darnedest to sucker the L'Amour faithful by dangling his name as a carrot on books that simply don't cut it. Unfortunately their game worked for me. I bought the book and found it to be as dull as ditch water!

As I noted in my review of May There Be A Road, don't waste your time on stories and writing that even L'Amour would admit are not his best. Rather, read one of his enduring classics like Hondo, The Lonely Men, Jubal Sackett or To the Far Blue Mountains.