Customer Reviews

The Lawless West

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4 star:		(2)
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LAWLESS WEST is the third and final collection of short novels written by Zane Grey, Louis L'Amour and Max Brand to be published by Leisure Books. (The other volumes were UNTAMED WEST and GOLDEN WEST). Considering how important Grey, Brand and L'Amour were to the genre, Leisure's trilogy is an excellent way to rediscover each author in turn.

First off, I have to admit it's been 40 years plus or minus since I've read works by Grey or Brand. And I never was a L'Amour fan; quantity not equaling quality in my book.

In any case, Grey's "From Missouri" leads off the trio of stories, being a short novel about a Missouri schoolmarm who is lured out west under somewhat false pretenses. She eventually finds true love in this quaintly charming piece.

Max Brand's "Over the Northern Border" is the best story in the book. It's a wonderful tale of Jack Trainor, a fugitive from justice who winds up in the Canadian Rockies. Lost in the wilderness, he is saved by a simple-minded trapper. Over the course of some months, he repays the trapper by embroidering the letters the trapper sends to his fiance. When Trainor meets the lady in question he too is smitten but nevertheless helps the trapper find happiness. Brand's tale is a marvelous story populated by believable, likable human beings who value honor and friendship.

To be honest, Louis L'Amour's "Riders of the Dawn," the longest novel in the book, is a bit much to take. Matt Sabre, the story's hero, is a cocky gunfighter who wanders into a town and, in short order, sees a woman, decides he's going to marry her - and tells her to her face! - and then gets himself involved in a range war. The subsequent events that play out are interesting enough but the Sabre character is way too much in love with himself for my tastes.

In short, LAWLESS WEST is a mixed bag. The Zane Grey and Max Brand stories make it a worthwhile purchase though.

What a ridiculous opinion expressed by the gentleman from Arkansas. Max Brand was an American who graduated from Berkley and worked on ranches in the summers. In short, he knew the West. I believe he is confusing Max Brand with Karl May.

Max Brand's "Over the Northern Border" is a short story of 80 pages or so, and I enjoyed it very much. The main character takes the rap for a crime he didn't commit in order to protect his brother-in-law. In so doing, he becomes a fugitive, and the story expands nicely from there. As for the reviewer from Arkansas, with all due respect, we are reviewing a book, not reviewing the author's skill on a horse or with a gun.

I have not purchased or read this book, nor will I. To put Max Brand alongside Zane Grey and Louis Lamour is ludicrous, to say the least. Max Brand never rode a horse, spent any time on a ranch, shot a gun, or anything else he wrote about. Some publisher saw how well Zane Grey was doing and how popular he was, so they approached a German writer of poetry, Max Brand.