Van Houck said, “You sound like your dad. He
used to say a gun without a man was a useless hunk of iron; while a man without
a gun was still a man.”
I’ll admit I had high hopes for this 1956 novel from Donald Hamilton
as I rate his novel The Big Country
easily one of the best the genre has to offer.
Here we have a tale of a man unjustly imprisoned who returns to his hometown
where he is a pariah. He goes about minding his own business until he is dragged
into other’s business and must right a few wrongs and restore his good name.
Much ado is made in the beginning about our protagonist being a knife-fighter
as opposed to a gunman, but to be honest this intriguing twist doesn’t amount to
much in the end.
The novel starts out with fine promise with swift pace and gimlet-eyed
observation but around the middle it seems to lose steam and falls into
by-the-numbers formulary structure.
A shame. A talented writer seems to idle in neutral here.
