Longarm. I remember seeing these books when I worked at a book store. I used to wonder ‘How did they hit 300 books?’ When I saw they’d released a couple of omnibuses collecting the first four books I decided to give ‘em a tumble.

Longarm by Lou Cameron
I was surprised, reading the first book in the series that it didn't feel like an introductory book. The character of Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long (A.K.A. Longarm) emerges fully formed in the first chapter (or as fully formed as he's likely to get).

So the Longarm books are all about the plot then, rather than being about the growth of Marshal Long. That didn't give me a lot of hope as I admit the plot of the first book just didn't sound as interesting as the second book in this omnibus.

Longarm is sent out to the tiny town of Crooked Lance to fetch a prisoner, a cow thief captured by the town's 'vigilance committee'. Seems Long wasn't the first marshal dispatched to Crooked Lance. What happened to his predecessor is unknown.

Longarm does make it to Crooked Lance and finds he's in the middle of a mess. The prisoner is a nobody named Cotton Younger, but he may have ties to the James/Younger gang and could theoretically provide info on the whereabouts of Frank and Jesse James. Because of this Longarm isn't alone in wanting to bring Younger to justice...

I enjoyed the writing of this first book. I wish I could find a list of the different authors who wrote 'Tabor Evans' books, to give credit where credit is due (I did and I have). The author of this one knew his stuff. The writing was rich in incidental detail and made good use of Western idioms. Honestly, the narrative was a lot better than the fan-fiction level writing I was expecting out of what is basically a romance novel for men.

Also, this wasn't the blood'n'guts action-fest I thought it would be. It's really a mystery in the Old West. I'm not sure if that's a formula for the series or just how this first one was handled.

The dialog was a bit clumsier than the narration. I thought the 'Western accent' was laid on pretty thick with more 'Gawd's and 'durn's than you could shake a stick at. It did make the book fun to read through though.

This book is no classic, but it was lots of fun and well written for what it is.

Longarm on the Border by Melvin Marshall
The second of the long-running Longarm pulp western series. I was looking forward to reading this second Longarm book as the synopsis just sounded a little more interesting to me. Less likely to be a mystery wearing a stetson, which is what parts of the first book felt like.

At first I was a little disappointed with the book. Longarm riding into the disreputable border town of Los Perros just wasn’t as suspenseful or tinged with menace as I thought it would be. There was an interesting dynamic of Longarm playing it cagey with the corrupt sheriff, so it was still entertaining, but not quite what I'd hoped it would be.

Things improve dramatically though as Longarm follows a trail of dirty deeds across the border to Mexico. Before you can say ‘Remember the Alamo!’, Longarm is up to his neck in cattle rustling, crooked Mexican police, a jailbreak and a chase back to the (relative) safety of the Rio Grande and the border and good old Los Perros. This second half of the book flew by in a wave of exhilarating pacing.

The exciting second half made up for the first and overall I enjoyed the book. For me it outshone the first book. The narrative flourishes I'd enjoyed so much in the first book were missing from this one (I’m guessing this one was written by a different author?), but the dialogue was better, less hokey. The characters are still two-dimensional or less, but I really didn’t expect any different. I don’t think it’s fair to expect rich characterization in a pulp novel. These books are written with a different purpose in mind.

One strike against this book is the sex scenes. The Longarm books always contain a minimum of four semi-graphic sex scenes. Let’s be honest, I enjoy those scenes and can not knock the series for their inclusion. However in this book they came off as forced. They didn’t naturally flow from the events in the story the way they did in the first book. Here they would crop up at the unlikeliest times. I think that the nature of the story being told didn’t naturally lend itself to sexual situations and the author was sort of forced to wedge them in. Though they were fun to read, I think this book would have been better if some of the scenes were omitted.

Hey, if my biggest gripe about a book is that there are too many sex scenes, it can’t be that bad, huh? ( )