Customer Reviews

West on 66

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OK, this book is not Steinbeck and the Joads, but it's a "kick." It's September, 1957 and, with the assistance of *A Guide Book to Highway 66,* our hero and his "damsel in distress" are out to foil the bad guys and find hidden treasure. We follow Route 66 from Chicago's Lake Michigan over 2,000 miles to (Pacific) Ocean Avenue in Los Angeles. It was a fun and memory-laden trip for me.

Maybe the book will whet your appetite for touring on "Old" or "Historic" 66 instead of Interstate 55 or 40. A lot of the old "Mother Road" is still there. So is Dixie Trucker's Home and other "attractions." Modern society has a "need for speed," but sometimes it's nice to slow down and look around.

Along the way, the author makes poignant sociological and economic points: "... the aging two-lane bridge over the wash west of Peerless (which the author notes is `the only truly `made up' locale in West on 66 ... and even it is a composite of the numerous bypassed and abandoned road communities that can be found along the western interstates.') was taken out by a flash flood. This was bad enough, but then some bright young engineer in the State Highway Department noticed that if a replacement span and a bypass were built just a few miles downstream, a meandering northern loop could be cut out of Route 66. The driving time from Winslow to Flagstaff could be reduced by a good fifteen minutes. No doubt feeling proud of himself, he reached down and drew a little line on the map. He couldn't have destroyed Peerless any more thoroughly if he'd called a bombing mission. The traffic on the highway had become the lifeblood of the town. Deprived of that bloodflow, gangrene set in rapidly. No one came to eat Mary's hot beef sandwiches. No one pawed through the beads and trinkets in the Tom Tom Trading Post. No one stayed at the Grand Canyon Auto Court even after they put in real air conditioning."

And later on, towards the conclusion of this 1957 journey:

"From Pasedena we took the Arroyo Seco Parkway downtown. Lately, Ike's had a real bug in his ear about building a whole lot more of these freeways, as they're calling them. They're planning on running them all over the country, and it's supposed to be quite a deal. I wonder. I can't help thinking about Peerless and about all the other little towns strung out along old 66 and the other two-lanes. What happens to them when the superslabs cut them off and their mother roads die? If the Russians were to destroy a couple of hundred American communities, we'd call it an act of war. If we do it to ourselves, we call it progress."

This is the perfect book for every boomer whose heart has warmed to the throb of a V8 engine, speeded up at the sound of a pair of glasspacks, or lusted after a 57 Chevy. The car information is legit, the chase scenes believable, the dialog terrific and the descriptive phrasing is right on the mark. I actually felt like I was travelling along the mother road with Kev and Lissette. The plotting was good, moved along rapidly and I found it plausible for the time. Too bad so many people picked this up expecting a techo thriller and were disappointed. It was great to step back to a simpler time if only for a few hours. What a great read! I'd like to see this one made into a movie!

I can only wish that my summer road expolits were as exciting as the ones that this cop takes! There's nothing in this world more powerful and scintillating than the human imagination. And this book right here gives your imagination everything that it could ask for and a whole lot more. There's Mafioso types, blood, guns, beautiful places to be buried in, an anti-hero, a total hottie, love scenes... Christ, is there anything else that you really need. Congrats and thanks to James Cobb for a totally cool book and I encourage all of you to get your kicks on Route 66.

West on 66 is what I would call a near-miss. It's a wonderful concept -- a "road novel" set on the country's best-known two-lane highway, back in its 1958 heyday. But there's too much tourism, not enough story. And the really curious thing is that the hero seems to be a tourist in his own time.

Now, before I get into it, let me say this: The book has a few terrific action sequences and a couple of strongly written scenes, and it does a good job of capturing the hot-rod obsession of the time. The book doesn't deserve a pan. On the other hand, it also has a couple of scenes that left me wincing. (At one point, the hero's partner on the L.A. Sheriff's department advises him never to get involved with a woman while he's on a case. Gak!)

But the thing that really bothers me is that the hero sounds more like a man of the milennium than a tough young car-crazy sheriff's deputy of 1958. The problem appears on the first page: When the hero pulls up at a stoplight, he observes that "a porthole-fendered Buick sat in the outside lane." If we were to describe a '50s-vintage Buick today, of course we'd mention the portholes, because they are one of the most striking features of the car. A man of 1958 wouldn't have bothered. Back in the '50s, all Buicks had portholes in the fenders, and to say the Buick had portholes is sort of like mentioning that the Buick had tires.

We see this kind of problem throughout the book. When the hero pulls up at a certain specific truck stop in Illinois, he immediately understands its historic significance -- it's one of the nation's first truck stops -- and naturally he has to tell us about it. To a guy in 1958, though, it would have been a place for a fillup and a cuppa joe. When the Dorsey Brothers' "So Rare" comes on the radio, the hero observes that it was the last big-band tune to hit the Top 40. This may be true, but in 1958 the tune was a year old. How could he know? And for something like 2,000 miles, the hero offers us guidebook-type detail about the cities through which he passes, fascinating enough in its own way, but nothing like the way this kind of guy would have seen the world.

Somehow the hero has been gifted with the awareness that there is something special about Route 66. We know it today, of course, and we celebrate the neon signs and the ticky-tacky tourist traps. But I suspect that to a motorist in 1958 the road seemed more like 2,000 miles of ordinary two-lane blacktop, with plenty of cheap motels and greasy diners along the way.

A good book from a road trip point of view. I have visited several of the spots he talks about and the memories are interesting. It is also a good old fashioned mystery. I thought this book was an intersting mixture of these two genres.

I thoroughly enjoyed West On 66 - the darkside revenge, tragic combustible power plays, the competition between The Car & The Caddy & the burgeoning trust & affection developing between two brittle people who play their cards real close to their chests. It is September of 1958 when vacationing L.A. County Deputy Sheriff Kevin Pulaski stops at a truckers' cafe in Illinois as he heads home on the Mother Road. He wasn't looking for anything more than a cup of coffee & a hot meal, what he found was a beautiful & enigmatic young woman with a mission & some family members out to get her back. A rollicking good ride down Route 66 into imagination, danger & redemption. For my full review do check out: rebeccasreads.com.

Mr. Cobb is the author of two very good military thrillers, but he's taking a break with this Route 66 pursuit and chase story. A leather jacket cigarette puffing hero who can't resist a slightly duplicitious frail and some nail biting car driving chases. There's explosions and gunshots to satisfy most people. Now, please get back to the military books.

If you love fast cars, tough guys, and beautiful women with a past, then click on through and get James H. Cobb's WEST ON 66.

After discovering how much distances is between them, Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff Kevin Pulaski takes leave of his brother's home in Chicago and at the famous McLean Truck Stop ends up with a young woman on the lam from her stepfather, a vicious mobster.

While on their way to his car, Kevin and the young woman are accosted by thugs, and Pulaski smoothly gets the pair out of trouble, only to have them on his tail from then on.

Ever since The Illiad, we've seen this story. Yet Cobb blends the mytholgy of U.S. Route 66 with a credible mystery yarn to deliver a marvelous hard-boiled novel where Route 66 becomes as much a part of the story as the living characters. Recommended!

This thriller is written in the best tradition of the modern incarnation of the hard broiled detective. Even though the main character is a "cop" (L.A. Sherriff)- he is a loner. I felt swept back to the late 50's- and yet was with a character who did not glory in chavinism- either towards women or other people. The detail on cars I needed to "blip" over - not understanding one word in three- but I am sending this book as a gift to a friend who rebuilds cars and who likes thrillers- she will adore it !

In 1958, Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff Kevin Pulaski is driving home in his `57 Chevy on Route 66 West from his brother's Illinois house. Stopping at a truck stop, he meets Lisette Kingman who hitches a ride with Kevin.

Lisette is the daughter a dead gangster who stole a fortune from his partners. Lisette, accompanied by Kevin, is on the trail of the money her father hid somewhere along Route 66. However, her father's former cronies are hot on the trail of Lisette and Kevin.

WEST ON 66 is more of a homage to the era of the gas guzzling highway through the heartland of America than anything else. The mystery is weak and fails to hold the reader's attention. Lisette is an interesting femme fatale type of character. Kevin's motives in helping her do not ring true even though he finds her beautiful and mysterious. Fans of classic fifties' cars and tales of the old highway will enjoy this novel, but mystery readers will want to hitch a ride elsewhere.

Harriet Klausner