Customer Reviews

Borden Chantry

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As in his collection of short stories The Hills of Homicide, L'Amour shows he can master the art of mystery-writing in Borden Chantry. Louie excels in developing caharcters in all of his books, and the murder suspects in this novel are no exception. Was it the barkeep, the banker, the rancher, the prostitute, the horse thief, the wife, or the best friend? The reader will keep on guessing throughout the book untill L'Amour delivers the chilling climax.

I love all of the cowpokes in Louie's books, but Borden chantry is truly my favorite. He was a man who would really have preferred ranching to wearing the badge, and everyone in the town doubted that he could solve a murder mystery. Nonetheless, Borden proved he could track down cold-blooded killers as well as he could punch cattle. We get to see where Tom Chantry got his sand in this exciting prequel.

L'Amour excelled in everything he tried to write. Poetry, westerns, short stories, novels; you name it, he could write it it, and I strongly urge any of his fans to read this book. Please do not shy away because it is a mystery. And if you like it, go on and read the story of Borden's son in North to the Rails. Both of these books are excellent, and it is hard to decide which is better!

Personally, I think Louis L'Amour did a pretty good job writing this mystery. It deserved more than two stars for sure! I agree with the guy who said Kirby Jonas is good, and I would recommend anything by him, especially Legend of the Tumbleweed. But Borden Chantry was well worthwhile reading, and Louis even got one of the more obscure Sackett Brothers, Bob, in the book! Good show! Kirby Jonas and Louis L'Amour should have written some together.

This book is full of mystery, action, and in some spots romance. I have this book at home and have read it a couple of times. If you are a Louis Lamour lover this is your kind of book.

This book gives you the thrills of livig in wild country, right from your own home! Louis L'amour is a famous author, but totally down to earth about what happened in our "Old West." He writes like no other author who's books I have read. And I have read a LOT of books.

Louis Lamour adds 2 things to all his westerns (on top of being a fine story teller who writes in an economic, easily read script, of course!)

He likes to spend time with historic characters, places, and events from those times; and
He always like to make a suitably moral message, which he drums in just enough to dig in under your sub-conscious

So here we find little cameos for Billy the Kid, Pat Garret, Buffalo Bill and others from the East; the town of Durango in Colorado, and a famous old hotel or two. Along with the True Meaning and Value of the Law :).

All of which adds just enough flavour and colour to put substance to what is a very nice little murder mystery, and a very satisfyingly self-effacing hero ...

Good for an hour or two's feet-up reading.

This is one of the best of Louis L'Amour's smaller, earlier novels. Some of them read as though they were rushed--and they probably were. Hell, when he wrote this he had to write three a year to feed his family! But this one really held me. Very immediate and thoughtful, with a strong narrative line. And Borden Chantry is one of the writer's most sympathetic heroes.

All good ingredients of western ar met this story except that of Louis L'Amour: injustice, a sense of justice, fights, shootings. A small town in the Far West was often the aggregate of a few huts of wood, a saloon and did that by the will of a few pioneers to make a community. Borden Chantry, sheriff in the heart tender, but hardened skin leather, will defend it.

well the author known as Loius La'mour i think is a very talented writer who knows what hes talking about. he has written many books that deal with the old western days. if you are a fan and like things to do with those themes you most likely will like these books. i have given this book a 4 star rating due to the fact that in some spots it almost seemed to be that he just kind of stopped.

this book is about a rancher who raises cattle. there was a big freeze so all his cattle had died. the old marshal was killed so borden chantry became the town marshal. but in his minds for just a short time. then there where some murders. so he was working on them. thats how good this book is. youll just have to read it to see how exactly it is.

Louis L'Amour's 1977 novel BORDEN CHANTRY proved to be an engaging Western "whodunnit" mystery yarn that stirred up good memories of Richard Boone's short-lived mystery-Western series HEC RAMSEY. Chantry is more Roy Rogers than Richard Boone's scruffy frontier detective, however, a married man with children who is unflagging in his dedication to duty. Chantry is an accidental town marshal, a down-on-his-luck rancher who stepped into the breach when the previous marshal died in a suspicious landslide.

The story opens at dawn with the small Colorado town coming to life, with the exception of the dead body laying in the street. Nobody seems too shook up about it; killings are a not uncommon occurrence in this hardbitten land. But this killing is different from the usual drunken gunfights, and while Chantry could just bury the unidentified body in Boot Hill, his sense of duty and justice is aroused. And it turns out to be a good thing that it was. The spectre of the Sacketts suddenly rises and looms over the story. That iconic family's reputation is widely known and Chantry is fearful of the Sackett brand of justice should they come to town and discover their kin's killing has not been solved.

As expected in mysteries, there are many suspects all acting suspiciously. L'Amour does a fine job of keeping his reader's guessing. I dutifully pegged a number of innocents as guilty before L'Amour tipped his hand towards the end. And as often happens in mysteries, the "big reveal" is anticlimactic, but L'Amour's story is so engrossing that the thrill of getting there outweighed the slight emptiness I felt at the end. Unlike many mysteries, however, BORDEN CHANTRY does not boast an all-knowing and clever sleuth. Chantry stumbles along, missing clues, relies on the unsolicited insights of friends and family, and beats himself up for overlooking the obvious. He's a thoroughly human detective, which only adds to his appeal.

Standout supporting characters include Kim Baca, a horse thief whom L'Amour paints as a sympathetic ne'er-do-well, an impulsive lover of horses who steals 'em just to ride 'em. But horse stealing was a capital crime in the West, as L'Amour notes. Chantry discerns sincerity and goodness in Baca and knows that allowing him to go to prison will snuff out the light he has and harden him, so Chantry steps out on faith and entrusts Baca with a great responsibility. Boone Silva (a nod to Richard Boone?) is another memorable character, a hired gun brought in to kill Chantry when he gets too close to uncovering the murderer's identity. The first meeting between Silva and Chantry is a suspenseful stand-off, followed directly by a gripping vignette detailing Chantry's stumbling into a death trap. A character I hoped would be more fully developed was Big Injun, Chantry's freelance assistant who for a dollar will do what needs doing.

What hurts the book, in addition to the perhaps unavoidable disappointment at the killer's identity, were several characters straight from central casting that led me to suspect L'Amour was by this time writing his novels with one eye on potential film options. Among the cast is the devoted but concerned wife, the town busybody and gossip, the stuffy and corrupt banker, the philosophical judge and especially a little orphan boy named Billy McCoy whom Chantry readily takes into his home after his father is murdered. One can almost picture L'Amour checking off his list the stock characters which Hollywood would demand for a marketable Western.

BORDEN CHANTRY is a fun, brisk-paced read. The older Bantam editions run only 170 pages, with the newer "jet-puffed" edition with its bigger type coming in at 215 pages. One plus of the newer edition is its providing a map of Chantry's unnamed town, which map does help the reader orient himself in the lengthy descriptions of Chantry skulking about the streets at night. L'Amour followed up BORDEN CHANTRY with Fair Blows the Wind, a 1978 prequel that provides for Chantry what Sackett's Land (The Sacketts) did for the Sacketts; that is, provide an origin story that connects the Old West with its roots in the Old Country of Europe.

This book was not what I expected at all. I expected to read the history of Borden Chantry, father of Tom Chantry, and how he died, as Tom Chantry always talked about in L'Amour's book, North to the Rails. This was an attempt by a western writer at writing a mystery, which he obviously had little clue how to do. I was disappointed in it. It came across as a book someone would write just to make his quota of three books a year. I grew up reading L'Amour, and I wasn't pleased with this book. There is a new author critics call The New Louis L'Amour. He also puts mystery in a lot of his books, but this guy is really good at it. If you really like L'Amour, I would suggest you pick up a copy of Jonas's Death of an Eagle and compare. You'll see why I'm so down on Borden Chantry.