Customer Reviews

Forty Lashes Less One

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

 

 

Forty Lashes Less One is a great story. Two prisoners, Chiricahua Raymond San Carlos and a black man Harold Jackson are in Yuma prison for murder. At first they are bitter enemies but the warden puts them in an experiment to see if a training routine of long distance running can be used for rehabilatation. And then the warden sends them after 5 mean dangerous men. The trail is rough and bloody but they are sucessfull. As soon as they bring these men in they tell the warden to kiss !!! . A great story, you'll love it.

Forty Lashes Less One is the kind of book that hooks you from the start. It's the semi-old west (1909) but with more grit and true tone than you can find in most other gun totin' tales.
But then what can you expect from Elmore Leonard who gave us Valdez is Coming, 3:10 to Yuma, Hombre, The Tonto Woman and so many other good westerns?
For any of those high brow readers out there who think that westerns are beneath them then it might be worthwhile if they stuck their noses in a Leonard western if only to find out what good writing should and can be.

Though written over 20 years ago, this Leonard novel crackles with crisp ,lively characters that made the old west, young, raw and exciting.
It is an easy and entertaining read...

I have gotten hooked on Leonard's earlier works. His sense of timing and character development are excellent.

He is a great story teller. His subject matter is always plausible. He takes average everyday people and makes them interesting characters.

In the weeks before the prison at Yuma shuts down, two convicts abruptly knock heads -- Raymond, a frustrated Apache, and a laid-back former buffalo soldier named Harold Jackson.

They're the only non-whites in the pen and, after a dust up in the mess hall, they simply just do not like each other. Their animosity, however, has actually been engineered by jailed outlaw Frank Shelby, who runs a thriving black market racket behind bars with the air of royalty.

Will Raymond and Harold -- two strong-backed, decent-hearted outsiders surrounded by enemies -- ever unite and direct their hate toward the bad guys who really deserve it? That, of course, seems utterly impossible ....

This is the first of Leonard's many Westerns I've read. I'm used to his stories playing out in contemporary Miami or Detroit, and singing with back-and-forth dialogue. "Forty Lashes," obviously, resides in a different time and place - the Arizona desert at the dawn of the 20th Century. Fans of Leonard's contemporary crime fiction, however, will be pleased to find that even in his early days he knew how to structure a bent caper, how to give his characters conversations that feel overheard and how to add his unique spin to the proceedings.

I won't spoil one big twist, except to say that it involves two particularly unsatisfying changes of wardrobes, for lack of a better phrase. These feel awkwardly depicted, dated and ill-conceived, but that's more of a speed bump than a roadblock. No matter what you think of the costumes and the spear-throwing, its hard to deny the fast paperback pleasures of this short, tough, speedy little horse opera.

I've read all of the author's other books, except the westerns. "Hombre" and "Valdez" are among my favorite movies. So I confess, I blew it. But that means I have more good stuff to read. This work sounds as relevant today as when written in the early 50's. Race, religion, crime and punishment. And Elmore. Buy it.

Now guess who owns the rights for this book: Quentin Tarantino. Yeah, that's true.
And I hope he'll make this a great movie soon after Kill Bill (or Glorious Bastards).
This book is a nice epic western with great characters and potential for great visuals.
Leonard tells this tale in his style and irony. The characters are unique and the setting is new.
A great book, you should read. And maybe in a few years you can watch this in theaters as "The 5th or 6th film by Quentin Tarantino"...

I am a Leonard fan, have 42 of his books now.
The western novels and stories are great, so are the stories in this book.
The atmosphere, creative plots, the characters....truely good.