Customer Reviews

Longarm (Longarm, No. 1)

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Longarm by Lou Cameron

I was surprised, reading the first book in the series that it didn't feel like an introductory book. The character of Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long (A.K.A. Longarm) emerges fully formed in the first chapter (or as fully formed as he's likely to get).

So the Longarm books are all about the plot then, rather than being about the growth of Marshal Long. That didn't give me a lot of hope as I admit the plot of the first book just didn't sound as interesting as the second book in the omnibus I'd read this in.

Longarm is sent out to the tiny town of Crooked Lance to fetch a prisoner, a cow thief captured by the town's 'vigilance committee'. Seems Long wasn't the first marshal dispatched to Crooked Lance. What happened to his predecessor is unknown.

Longarm does make it to Crooked Lance and finds he's in the middle of a mess. The prisoner is a nobody named Cotton Younger, but he may have ties to the James/Younger gang and could theoretically provide info on the whereabouts of Frank and Jesse James. Because of this Longarm isn't alone in wanting to bring Younger to justice...

I enjoyed the writing of this first book. I wish I could find a list of the different authors who wrote 'Tabor Evans' books, to give credit where credit is due (I did and I have). The author of this one knew his stuff. The writing was rich in incidental detail and made good use of Western idioms. Honestly, the narrative was a lot better than the fan-fiction level writing I was expecting out of what is basically a romance novel for men.

Also, this wasn't the blood'n'guts action-fest I thought it would be. It's really a mystery in the Old West. I'm not sure if that's a formula for the series or just how this first one was handled.

The dialog was a bit clumsier than the narration. I thought the 'Western accent' was laid on pretty thick with more 'Gawd's and 'durn's than you could shake a stick at. It did make the book fun to read through though.

This book is no classic, but it was lots of fun.

Prolific author Lou Cameron created Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis "Longarm" Long in 1978, and you couldn't ask for a more complete character introduction that the one he gives in the opening of the first novel in the series, simply titled Longarm. In a smooth narrative style, Cameron chronicles Longarm's rising in the morning, and we get the whole rundown from nearly every detail of his appearance (his hair is tobacco-leaf brown) to his whiskey preference to his philosophy on hygiene.

On this particular morning, Long goes into the office of his boss, U.S. Marshal Billy Vail for an assignment: to go to the tiny village of Crooked Lance and bring Cotton Younger to face trial. When Longarm gets there, though, he finds that others had the same idea: a Canadian mountie, a local sheriff, a French-Canadian bent on revenge, a couple of bounty hunters, a captain of the U.S. Army -- and they all want Younger, either for the crimes committed under their jurisdiction or for the price on his head (as well as his assumed knowledge of the whereabouts of Frank and Jesse James and the even bigger rewards for them).

So, since nobody is letting anybody go anywhere with their prisoner, things come to a standstill. Soon, people start getting killed and true identities come to light, and it's up to Longarm to bring his man back to justice -- even though Younger swears he's not Younger -- and find out what happened to Deputy Kincaid, who came to Crooked Lance looking for Younger and disappeared.

This initial entry in the long-running series is one of the more interesting and well-written I've read yet. Cameron offers surprises galore in Longarm and keep the suspense high. Who is this Frenchman who doesn't speak French? And who is the woman who keeps climbing into Longarm's bed in the dark of night? Cameron knows his period and continually inserts little nuggets of historical context.

Longarm (recently reprinted with the second novel in the series in "double" fashion) is a hot-blooded Western and a good old-fashioned mystery with a solid, sensible ending. Only one question is left unanswered, but it serves to end the book with a chuckle. Even the love interest is drawn in an intriguing fashion, with the woman Longarm ends up with being the only one who can hold her own in a intellectually stimulating conversation. This novel starts the series off well, and Cameron (who was still occasionally writing Longarms as recently as 2006) sets the standard for all to follow.