The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 4

August 14, 2006
The fourth volume of the late L'Amour's short stories takes the author out of his familiar American frontier setting and into desolate and dangerous locales around the world, from "a narrow fjord at the end of the earth" on the southern coast of Chile to a "lonely isolated spot in the Coral Sea." While the characters are not traditional L'Amour, as "men of quick wit and valor" they share similar characteristics and values; freighter captain Ponga Jim Mayo, who plies the treacherous waters of the Indian Ocean during World War II (and is featured in nine of these 45 stories), succinctly sums up their worldview: "I'll make my own rules and abide by the consequences." The stories reflect the author's own youthful wanderings—as seaman, soldier and professional boxer—and, having been mostly written for pulp adventure magazines, are predictably formulaic. L'Amour's first publication, "Death Westbound," a Depression-era hobo story, crackles with his trademark prose: "Sometimes the shacks were pretty good guys, but a railroad dick is always a louie." No L'Amour fan will want to miss this collection. Afterword by L'Amour's son, Beau L'Amour.

October 1, 2006
L'Amour was known primarily as a churner-outer of westerns, but one of his most popular and enduring characters is Ponga Jim Mayo, the rough-and-ready, Nazi-baiting East Indies freighter captain who speaks with his right fist and punctuates with his left. The nine Ponga Jim stories form the cornerstone of this fourth volume of L'Amour short fiction. Dubbed " The Adventure Stories" --accurate up to a point but really just another way of saying nonwesterns--these tales showcase L'Amour's gift for compact, straightforward storytelling outside of the confines of his usual genre. Ranging from tales of train-hopping hobos to Himalayan tribes fighting to keep their distance from the modern world, the stories usually feature a tough hero shrugging off all odds for survival against hellish elements and zero-dimensional villains. The action is fast, hard-hitting, and a ton of fun. Every campfire should come with its own built-in Louis L'Amour to regale away the hours. Failing that, this volume adds a necessary touch of breadth to an already essential collection. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)