Reilly's Luck [Mass Market Paperback]

Louis L'Amour (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Bantam Books (1991)
• ASIN: B000OLDDYU
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)

More About the Author

"I think of myself in the oral tradition--as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man in the shadows of a campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered--as a storyteller. A good storyteller."

It is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world re-created in his novels as Louis Dearborn L'Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally "walked the land my characters walk." His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L'Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L'Amour could trace his own in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, "always on the frontier." As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family's frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.

Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L'Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs, including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, and miner, and was an officer in the transportation corps during World War II. During his "yondering" days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.

Mr. L'Amour "wanted to write almost from the time I could talk." After developing a widespread following for his many frontiers and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L'Amour published his first full length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 120 books is in print; there are more than 300 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the bestselling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

The recipient of many great honor and awards, in 1983 Mr. L'Amour became the first novelist to ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life's work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

Louis L'Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L'Amour publishing tradition forward with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars L'Amour's best of the 1970s, July 27, 2000

By 

Denny Smith - See all my reviews

This review is from: Reilly's Luck: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

Reilly's Luck is one of L'Amour's longest books of the period, and is the best. Read it. You will enjoy the story of Val Darrant as you watch him grow up throughout the book. Will Reilly is also one of my favorite L'Amour characters, and one of the most complex.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Hopeless Kid Makes Good, April 20, 2004

By 

J. Pace "Darrell Pace" (Tuscumbia, AL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Reilly's Luck: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

This story is titled for the secondary character. It is a little unusual for Louis L'Amour to give the title to someone other than the main character, but it works really well in this book. The real character is a young boy who was born into a terrible situation. Things looked hopeless for him when he was abandoned by his cold and heartless mother. Good fortune smiled upon him when he found his new care taker to be a gambling man with savvy and character. Will Reilly raised him right and taught him the secrets he would need to be a successful man. After a terrible killing, Val finds himself wanting revenge. Slowly and surely it will come in it's own time. When it does, it finds that a hopeless boy has grown into a good man who is well capable of settling all of the issues at hand. Facing a cold hearted mother after all those years would be enough to upset anyone, but you'll have to read the book to find out how he handles it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun, but a little unbelieveable, December 27, 2005

By 

A. Woodley "Patroness, Janeites, the Austen list" (New Zealand) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Reilly's Luck: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

While I could accept much of what is in here for the west I must admit, like other reviewers, there were elements in this which really annoyed me. It was mostly a good read but I felt there were too many plot elements in it which made it more like a Barbara Taylor Bradford rather than a Louis L'amour. For a start Val Darrant always seemed to make money no matter what he did, including going to university back East - he just succeeded and there was little to explain what or why he was doing - it simply seemed like a plot filler. As did the falling in love with the girl, Boston. Who really appeared out of nowhere and disappeared back into nowhere, virtually.

The basic story is that Val Darrant is dumped by his mother's boyfriend - but instead of leaving him in the snow to freeze to death, he is given to a local gambler whom he trusts - Reilly, of Reilly's luck. Reilly likes him and teaches him everything he knows, but 11 years later Reilly is gunned down in a cowardly planned killing. Val gets out of town, but later kills two of the men responsible. Now Val's mother has found out who he is and plans to kill her son whom she hasn't seen for 20 years. She is now rich and powerful and Val probably knows secrets about her he shouldn't.

I read this in an afternoon and enjoyed it despite holes in the plot so big you could drive a thousand head of cattle through it - it was still an enjoyably good read.