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Fiction. Western. Thriller. Historical Fiction. The marshal’s name was Borden Chantry. Young, lean, rugged, he’s buried a few men in this two-bit cow town—every single one killed in a fair fight. Then, one dark, grim day a mysterious gunman shot a man in cold blood. Five grisly murders later, Chantey was faced with the roughest assignment of his life—find that savage, trigger-happy hard case before he blasts apart every man in town . . . one by bloody one.Tags
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Member Reviews
This was my first Louis L'Amour and I had so much fun reading it! L'Amour's style, slow, precise and idiomatic, generates a perfect Western feel. I sensed that I was walking in the lazy streets of a Colorado frontier town where despite everyday boredom lays a restlessness and wary curiosity for strangeness. The plot slowly unfolds, giving ways to clues and suppositions with bouts of action. I appreciated the veiled violence, discreet compared to today's gruesomeness.
Overall an entertaining read which brings us back to a gone era.
Overall an entertaining read which brings us back to a gone era.
One of Louis L'Amour's best who done it's. It's a crime novel sent in Colorado of the old west. Borden is the local sheriff who has to deal with a murdered out of towner. As he investigates, more murders occur.
This one is hard to put down because you really want to find out who done it.
This one is hard to put down because you really want to find out who done it.
After severe weather leaves his ranch bereft of cattle, and with no money coming in, Borden Chantry takes the job of town sheriff to make ends meet. Things stay pretty quiet until a young stranger is found dead. Once Chantry makes an effort to solve the murder he meets resistance and dodges bullets. Good entry in the Chantry/Sackett/Talon series.
Borden Chantry is the character L'Amour used for western mysteries. Borden is a small town sheriff who tries to use common sense and reasoning to solve the killing of a young stranger to his town. (The young stranger is a Sackett, but the Sacketts are only marginally important in this story). The killing proves to be murder - and it leads to the uncovering of other murders both before and after this death. Borden's efforts to smoke out the killer - who he knows is someone in the town - lead through a number of blind alleys, and make him suspect even his friends.
Part of the Chantry cluster of books. Generally, a more urbane group than the Sackets that does cross over into their stories at times.
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870+ Works 99,502 Members
Born in Jamestown, North Dakota on March 22, 1908, Louis L'Amour's adventurous life could have been the subject of one of his novels. Striking out on his own in 1923, at age 15, L'Amour began a peripatetic existence, taking whatever jobs were available, from skinning dead cattle to being a sailor. L'Amour knew early in life that he wanted to be a show more writer, and the experiences of those years serve as background for some of his later fiction. During the 1930s he published short stories and poetry; his career was interrupted by army service in World War II. After the war, L'Amour began writing for western pulp magazines and wrote several books in the Hopalong Cassidy series using the pseudonym Tex Burns. His first novel, Westward the Tide (1950), serves as an example of L'Amour's frontier fiction, for it is an action-packed adventure story containing the themes and motifs that he uses throughout his career. His fascination with history and his belief in the inevitability of manifest destiny are clear. Also present and typical of L'Amour's work are the strong, capable, beautiful heroine who is immediately attracted to the equally capable hero; a clear moral split between good and evil; reflections on the Native Americans, whose land and ways of life are being disrupted; and a happy ending. Although his work is somewhat less violent than that of other western writers, L'Amour's novels all contain their fair share of action, usually in the form of gunfights or fistfights. L'Amour's major contribution to the western genre is his attempt to create, in 40 or more books, the stories of three families whose histories intertwine as the generations advance across the American frontier. The novels of the Irish Chantry, English Sackett, and French Talon families are L'Amour's most ambitious project, and sadly were left unfinished at his death. Although L'Amour did not complete all of the novels, enough of the series exists to demonstrate his vision. L'Amour's strongest attribute is his ability to tell a compelling story; readers do not mind if the story is similar to one they have read before, for in the telling, L'Amour adds enough small twists of plot and detail to make it worth the reader's while. L'Amour fans also enjoy the bits of information he includes about everything from wilderness survival skills to finding the right person to marry. These lessons give readers the sense that they are getting their money's worth, that there is more to a L'Amour novel than sheer escapism. With over 200 million copies of his books in print worldwide, L'Amour must be counted as one of the most influential writers of westerns in this century. He died from lung cancer on June 10, 1988. (Bowker Author Biography) Louis L'Amour, truly America's favorite storyteller, was the first fiction writer ever to receive the Congressional Gold Medal from the United States Congress in honor of his life's work, & was also awarded the Medal of Freedom. There are over 260 million copies of his books in print worldwide. (Publisher Provided) show less
Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Borden Chantry
- Original publication date
- 1977
- People/Characters
- Borden Chantry; Bess Chantry; Kim Baca; Mary Ann Haley; Billy McCoy; Time Reardon (show all 8); Lang Adams; George Riggins
- Important places
- American West
- Epigraph
- [None]
- Dedication
- To Tom and Jose--
- First words
- Dawn came like a ghost to the silent street, a gray, dusty street lined with boardwalks, hitching rails and several short lengths of water trough.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)He was five miles up the trail toward home when he realized that he was broke, his horse was tired, and he hadn't even eaten.
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 766
- Popularity
- 36,470
- Reviews
- 6
- Rating
- (3.79)
- Languages
- English, German, Portuguese
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 30
- ASINs
- 16
