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With These Hands [Mass Market Paperback]

Louis L'Amour (Author)
3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Book Description

April 29, 2003
The timeless fiction of Louis L'Amour is both unforgettable and undeniably American, deftly capturing the heroic bravery and intrepid spirit that make this nation great. L’Amour ’s legacy of work remains unparalleled, setting a standard of excellence that few other writers have matched. Now With These Hands pulls together some of L’Amour's very best work—eleven newly rediscovered stories that have never before appeared in a single volume.

From a South Seas island paradise to the icy reaches of the Arctic, from the dark, gritty streets of urban America to the rugged landscape of the untamed West, the stories gathered in With These Hands combine razor-sharp characters with breathtaking action and historic detail. Here are tales of adventure, mystery, passion, suspense, and the Old West as only L’Amour can tell them. The result is a collection that profoundly echoes the highs and lows of the human experience, while proving that life’s most vital moments can occur when and where we least expect them.

All of the classic L’Amour themes are represented: honor, loyalty, and standing up for what’s right despite the odds. These dramatic stories grab hold of the reader with a power and immediacy unsurpassed by any other writer. An exotic island in the Coral Sea is transformed into a tropical nightmare when it’s taken over by a band of hijackers—and only a daredevil pilot can stop their brutal carnage. A former boxer blows the lid off a vicious crime ring—and finds that his worst enemy is not a thug with a gun but his own tenacious curiosity. A down-on-his-luck rancher discovers the key to his own redemption—and desperately hopes that his revelation has not come too late for him to win the one thing he wants most of all. A private eye navigates the twists and turns of a labyrinthine whodunit—and proves that the greatest risk to a man’s honor is his own greed.

The title story "With These Hands" is a powerful tale that celebrates the triumph of the human spirit, as an oil company executive finds himself the sole survivor of an Arctic plane crash. Fighting for his life against the perilous cold and looming starvation, he resists the temptation to surrender to death—only to discover a life-affirming strength he never knew he had.

Vivid in scope and displaying the diverse talents of a master storyteller, the stories in With These Hands are certain to be treasured by both old and new fans, celebrating the incomparable imagination of a timeless American author.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The fourth and final posthumous Bantam collection of L'Amour's short stories comprises 11 adventures written in the 1940s and 1950s that call to mind pulp magazines, as tough men and curvy women trade snappy banter against a backdrop of mayhem and testosterone. Cowboys, boxers, detectives, pilots, sea captains and damsels in distress are L'Amour's heroes here, and no corny cliche is left untried. Still, these stories pack a solid punch of action, color and grim violence, in settings from Hollywood to the South Seas and Japan. Only one is a western, with rustlers and romance turning the head of a young cowboy, while three feature young, idealistic prizefighters pounding on bad guys. L'Amour was a clever mystery writer, too, with a talent for clues and suspense. In "Corpse on the Carpet," a Good Samaritan saves a kid from a mugging only to find himself in the middle of kidnapping, robbery and murder. In "Police Band," a bored and curious bystander and a sharp police detective team up unexpectedly to solve a series of crimes. Long-time L'Amour character Turk Madden appears in two stories, one of which is an action-packed wartime spy drama set in Japan. Sea captain Ponga Jim Mayo, another L'Amour favorite, steers a tramp steamer through submarine-infested waters with a hot cargo and a nest of enemy spies aboard in "Voyage to Tobalai." Best is the title story, a gritty and haunting account of an oil company executive's desperate struggle to survive in the Arctic wilderness after a plane crash. All of L'Amour's characters are fast with their fists, guns, mouths and wits, defending honor and battling greed and evil. There may not be much sophistication in this volume, but it's classic L'Amour entertainment.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

The late L'Amour's accomplishments are literary legend: 90 novels, 24 short story collections, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, a Congressional Gold Medal, and 260 million copies in print. His formula was simple: tell a good story and populate it with believable characters. He did it in the western novels he is most associated with, such as Hondo or the Sackett series, and he does it in his short stories. In this collection, the last of a four-volume series of stories that began with Beyond the Great Snow Mountains, he tells of an executive who finds the will to live after an arctic plane crash leaves him stranded in the wilderness. There is also a fighter who won't throw a fight in "Fighters Don't Dive," a pilot who fends off South Pacific outlaws in "Pirates of the Sky," and a young ranch hand who redeems himself with the help of a retired Pinkerton operative in "Six-Gun Stampede." These stories--previously uncollected--were published in various periodicals, "pulps," if you will, early in L'Amour's writing career. Fine reading from a master. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

  • Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Bantam (April 29, 2003)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 055358491X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0553584912
  • Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1 x 6.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #313,496 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

 

Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A great book of short stories, May 14, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: With These Hands (Hardcover)
This is a great compilation of stories. What makes it great is that they are not all the same. They jump from a murder mystery to a boxing story to a story of survival. Give it a try you probably won't be disappointed.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars L'Amour isn't just about westerns, June 17, 2003
This review is from: With These Hands (Mass Market Paperback)
I bought "With These Hands" on a whim during a trip to a local store. For some time I have had the idea floating around the periphery of my mind to actually read something, anything, from Louis L'Amour. He is immensely popular through his western themed books, most of which are still in print. The back cover of this book says there are 270 million of his books floating around out there. Can you imagine? That blows most of the big boys out of the water. With that knowledge firmly embedded in my mind, I bought "With These Hands" and gave it a whirl. What surprised me about this collection of short stories is that only one is a western. The rest of the stories are highly charged action tales about boxing, crime noir, or WWII. It seems that L'Amour wrote most of these stories years ago for the pulp magazines at the start of his writing career.

The first thing to realize about these stories is that they are not complex tales with sophisticated character development or multi-leveled plots. That is not to say that the underlying ideas of the stories are crude or undeveloped because each story does flow from an interesting theme. What L'Amour gives his readers is unrelenting action delivered with crisp dialogue and a minimum of words. Action stalks through each of these stories like a beast on a rampage. Teeth rocket out of mouths, noses are pulped, gunfire crackles, and bodies fall like rain. Not surprisingly, the boxing stories contain the most descriptive passages of violence. But all of the stories deliver a maximum level of entertainment to those readers looking for action heavy fiction.

The most surprising realization with these stories is that L'Amour does an excellent job writing crime noir yarns. Arguably the best one included here is "Corpse on the Carpet." In this slangy, gritty tale, an ex-boxer named Kipling Morgan happens to show up at a bar at the wrong (or right, depending on what perspective you take) time. He witnesses a smashingly beautiful woman decked out in expensive jewelry pick up a young guy and leave. Intrigued yet concerned that something isn't quite right with this scene, Kip follows the two across town. When our ex-boxer realizes it is a set-up to shake down the guy for money, he steps in and saves the guy from a serious beating. There is no happy ending at this point, as Kip continues to investigate the suspicious events concerning the woman. What follows is the discovery of a murder, a kidnapping, a gang of dangerous thugs on the lam, and fistfights and shootouts. "Corpse on the Carpet" is everything a great short story should be in this genre. It easily matches up with Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op stories.

The several boxing tales in this collection came about from L'Amour's own career as a boxer (!). There is always a little hook in each story to serve as background leading up to the showdown in the ring, such as a boxer seeking revenge (Gloves for a Tiger), or a boxer who sees his victories in a dream (Dream Fighter). The action is where it's at, though. L'Amour mimics a ringside announcer with his blow by blow descriptions of fighters beating each other into hamburger. But it is in these boxing tales that the biggest problem with this collection is most apparent: the author has the annoying tendency to use exclamation marks to the point of distraction. Nearly every sentence describing the fights has one at the end of the sentence, and it gives the story a sometimes irritatingly adolescent atmosphere.

Then there are the war stories, usually centered on an aviator or the captain of a supply ship. Whether dealing with pirates taking advantage of the war to ply their trade (Pirates of the Sky), or heading out on a secret mission in the heart of wartime Japan (Flight to Entebu), L'Amour always gives us a hero, with a glint in his eye and a jaw of steel, to win the day. Expect to see aerial combat, hand-to-hand combat, double-crossing treachery, and high body counts in these war tales.

The odd story out, and the one used for the title of this collection, is strikingly similar to something Jack London would write. In "With These Hands," a plane crash in snow clogged mountains forces the lone surviving passenger, an oil company executive, to reassess his conceptions about life. This story is a real "man vs. nature" tale, with the executive forced to build shelter, hunt game, keep a fire going, and constantly be on the lookout for rescue planes while he tries to stay alive. "With These Hands" is definitely different from the other stories in the collections, but it is just as entertaining as the rest.

"With These Hands" is a fun collection of short stories that are great for passing a few hours. I expect to read a few more of these L'Amour books during the next few months since I do like to read action stories that don't require a lot of thought from time to time. L'Amour died in 1988, but these collections assembled by his family continue to appear with some regularity. Let's hope they keep finding more lost L'Amour treasures.

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10 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars NOT AGAIN!, September 2, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: With These Hands (Mass Market Paperback)
When I read May There Be A Road by Louis L'Amour I hoped that it would bomb so badly that we wouldn't have to endure anything like it again. Unfortunately the heirs of the late, great western story teller apparently have not tired of doing their darnedest to sucker the L'Amour faithful by dangling his name as a carrot on books that simply don't cut it. Unfortunately their game worked for me. I bought the book and found it to be as dull as ditch water!

As I noted in my review of May There Be A Road, don't waste your time on stories and writing that even L'Amour would admit are not his best. Rather, read one of his enduring classics like Hondo, The Lonely Men, Jubal Sackett or To the Far Blue Mountains.

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