I really enjoyed reading The Bells of El Diablo. It is a solid, unassuming action-adventure western that only wants to spin the reader a good yarn. And when the writer has such a modest and endearing goal, no doubt motivated by his own love of westerns, it's hard not to be charmed.

Author Frank Leslie's ability to get the reader onside is essential because, for all its charm, it does have one or two flaws. For one, I wish the quest to find the Bells was a bit more prominent in the plot, and I wish it had been more of a challenge in terms of actually finding them. I also got a bit exasperated about how, in the many gunfights, the bad guys would shoot first and miss, and then one of our protagonists would shoot and hit. I lost count of how many times it happened, and it often happened even when the bad guys had the drop on them. I didn't mind all the gunfights (I liked how some of the guns - namely James' Henry repeater and Crosseye's Lefaucheux revolver - almost had personalities of their own) but it did take me out of the story when all the villains were worse shots than the stormtroopers in Star Wars. To be fair, though, most action writers struggle to get around this problem of having the protagonist get into exciting, tight situations like gunfights and still have them come out the other side. Having the bad guys not being able to hit the side of a barn is the easiest way to get out of having your protagonist dead within thirty pages.

But these gripes are only minor and don't even factor in if you are won over by the novel's charm. Leslie is a good story-teller, creating in this novel a clear, straightforward plot, likeable characters and camaraderie between them, and an interesting MacGuffin (though more could have been done to flesh out the story behind the titular Bells). There is also the occasional twist (I did see the one towards the end coming, but this could just be because of my mistrustful nature) and the odd hints of darkness lying underneath the prose but, all in all, it's just a good old adventure. Leslie knows his stuff and, whilst he relies largely on standard western tropes, it does feel authentic and you can lose yourself in the story for a day or two. The ending even had the classic 'ride off into the sunset' trope, reinforcing the fact that the author just wanted to give you a good, honest western with a bit of gunplay. He does it well, and I will certainly look to Frank Leslie again if I want to just lose myself in a tale of the Old West. ( )