Kilkenny (1954)

A competent gunman who desires to live in peace has a difficult goal, since he is naturally inclined to stand up for the weak, and has the skill and leadership ability to do so. Kilkenny is educated and kind, respectful toward women and those in authority. Does Kilkenny have any faults? Maybe too eager to kill when provoked, but I think a weakness of the Kilkenny series that this man is fairly one dimensional. On the other hand, the story line is good: the bad guys are strong, but the good guys are stronger. Not a bad one for teenagers.

Good fast read. Not L'Amour's best. ( )

The quality of the prose is quite bad. For the first chapter or two, it's so terrible that you can hardly tell what's going on, and if it didn't rely so heavily on predictable western tropes, it would be incomprehensible. The writing smooths out pretty soon, though, and although it's always bad, it's at least readable. The plot, on the other hand, is good, with a fair amount of excitement and a handful of very cool scenes. Unfortunately the ending is not one of those scenes; it's just a standard shootout like you'd expect from a B movie - pretty disappointing. This is only the second Louis L'Amour book (and the second western) I've read. The other, Last Stand at Papago Wells, is a much better book, so much so that I have a hard time believing they were both written by the same person. ( )