BORDEN CHANTRY

I was always reading when I was a kid. Not just comic books, but paperbacks of almost all genres. I carried a paperback with my school books every day in anticipation of the opportunity to read a few pages throughout the school day of a book that wasn't required reading. My teachers never had to ask me to read anything. In fact, they often had to ask me to stop reading my various pulp fictions and turn to the book that was assigned to the class.

I read a ton of stuff in those days; a lot of science fiction, mysteries, spy thrillers, adventure novels, etc. When I was in high school, my chief supply of out-of-classroom reading material were the paperback reprints of the DOC SAVAGE pulp novels of the '30s and '40s. I tore through those babies something fierce and they filled a lot of down time during after school basketball practice when I, as the the team manager, had time to sit in the coach's office and ostensibly do my homework. Homework be damned. Many an afternoon found me off on some wild ass adventure with Doc and the Fabulous Five. My nearly lifelong association with Dr. Clark Savage Jr. will be the subject of a much longer forthcoming post here on the old blog. Stay tuned.

But there was one genre of pulp fiction that I didn't read and that was westerns. Don't ask me why. I loved western television shows and movies but I just never picked up a western novel of any kind for fun reading. My buddy Ray Kohler (who passed away entirely too young in 2006), was a huge fan of Louis L'Amour. He read L'Amour novels like I read DOC SAVAGE books. He used to give me grief about wasting my time with that Doc Savage "crap", while I would do the exact same thing to him, ribbing him mercilessly about how "stupid" those Louis L'Amour westerns were. We had a long standing challenge (more like a dare, really) that I would read a Louis L'Amour if Ray would read a Doc and vice versa. Neither one of us ever fulfilled the bargain and we graduated high school without ever having ever shared our respective passions.

Years later, I was working at the Book Exchange, a small, local store that sold new and used paperbacks at cheap prices. Our bread and butter merchandise were the numerous paperback romances that were just beginning to explode in the 1980s. The second best selling product in the store was Louis L'Amour westerns. We put a premium on them, would always buy them (for 10% of the cover price) and we were constantly selling through and needing to replenish stock. The books sold almost entirely to men and mostly older gentlemen at that. They were wildly popular, incredible sellers but I just couldn't, for the life of me, see what was so great about them.

I picked one up out of curiosity (sorry, I can't recall the title) and started reading one afternoon. I thought the prose was incredibly simplistic and the plot kind of routine. That brief sampling didn't grab me and I didn't finish the book. Needless to say, I did not become a L'Amour fan. And it's not that I didn't like westerns. By this time in my reading life, I'd discovered the early western novels of Elmore Leonard. I read several of those and thoroughly enjoyed them so it's not that I held any disdain for the genre. I suppose I had some kind of wildly misplaced sense of elitism regarding the L'Amour books. Any thing that popular, that so many people liked, no, loved, couldn't really be any good. They appealed to the lowest common denominator and my reading tastes were more refined than that. Yeah, I was a bit of a literary snob (says the man who reads almost nothing but pulp fiction).

My late father-in-law Lawrence Matetzschk was a huge Louis L'Amour fan. He had read practically everything the man ever wrote at least once, some books multiple times. He read other western authors but L'Amour was his main man. Lawrence often encouraged me to try one, generously offering me any book off of his bulging bookshelves for the trying. I always politely refused, citing the lame excuse that I already had too many other books that I needed to read (which was, in all honesty, the truth). So once again, I missed out on an opportunity to share a deeply held passion with a loved one. Ray was gone and in 2015, so was Lawrence. They were both fine men and I miss them dearly. Why was I so damn stubborn and obstinate about reading a Louis L'Amour book? Good night nurse, it certainly wouldn't have done me any harm to read one.

A couple of weeks ago, my mother-in-law gave me two large produce boxes full of books. Some (the romances and cozy mysteries) were hers but the majority of the books were paperback westerns that Lawrence had owned. She implored me to sell them at Half Price Books or on eBay, whatever I wanted, she just wanted to get them out of the house where they were doing nothing but taking up space and gathering dust. I brought the boxes home and thought, before I start selling all of these beat up old paperbacks, I ought to at least read one or two. After all, now was the perfect opportunity to make up for lost time. Beter late than never, right? So, in honor of two men who always stood tall in the saddle in my book, I read my first Louis L'Amour western. Finally, at the age of 62, I get what makes these books so popular.

BORDEN CHANTRY (1977) is, believe or not, a murder mystery western and as a mystery writer, L'Amour is a great western writer. A man is found murdered in the street of a small town. The man was a stranger in town and it's up to rookie town marshall Borden Chantry to solve the crime. Chantry, a rancher by trade, became the marshall by town consent after the previous marshall died in what appeared to be a tragic accident. Chantry has no training as a law enforcement officer but he has a quick, agile mind and he's one determined son-of-a-bitch. He'llsolve the murder (and others) or die trying. And the killer aims to see that Chantry meets his end during the course of his investigation.

The identity of the killer is no surprise (I had him pegged early on), but L'Amour puts Chantry through a twisting maze of clues and suspects all of which lead him into deadly jeopardy. Chantry finds himself trapped in a caved-in mine at one point and has a shootout with a hired gun before he finally tracks down and confronts the man responsible for half a dozen murders. By the way, the stranger in town whose murder sets the plot in motion, is a member of L'Amour's fabled Sackett family, a frontier dynasty that stars in over a dozen of their own novels. One funny thing, L'Amour bends over backwards not to call a whore house a whore house but it's certainly obvious what's really going on at Mary Ann's house.

The writing is simple, yes, but L'Amour was a master storyteller who kept me turning the pages. Chantry makes for a compelling protagonist even if he sometimes comes off as being a bit larger-than-life. Bottom line: I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and look forward to reading more Louis L'Amour novels in the future. I've got two boxes full of escapist adventure awaiting me. I just wish I could share this experience with Ray and Lawrence. I hope you guys will find it in your hearts to forgive me for coming so late to the dance. It would have been more fun with you both as partners.