The Man Called Noon (1969)

Ruble Noon awakens laying on the dirt with a broken window above him, a wound from a bullet that just grazed his noggin, and no memory whatsoever of how he ended up in this predicament or the bad hombres that appear to be after him. Unsure if he's supposed to be a lawman being chased by outlaws or an outlaw being chased by lawmen, Noon crawls his way out of Dodge and ends up hitching a ride on the next train out of town, eventually making his way to a ranch with a pretty lady proprietress and a stable of unsavory hands. Every time Noon tries to lay low and wait for his memory to come back, trouble seems to find him. But Noon will quickly discover that he's not so bad at shooting his way out of trouble...

I'd seen a few western movies based off works by Louis L'Amour (there seemed to be a steady supply of them that appeared as TV movies in the 90's into the early 2000's) and of course I was familiar with the name, but I'd never actually read one of his hundred or so novels... until now. Given my love of pulp, spaghetti westerns, and Old West history in general, it's surprising I'd passed by L'Amour for so long: he's like the Elvis Presley of western fiction in terms of name recognition and his novels continue to sell a tremendous amount of copies even today as reprints. The dude lived one hell of a life and also seemed to be insanely humble about his own literary prowess ("I'm just now getting to be a good writer" he said... when he was 80 years old.)

The Man Called Noon (which was made into a euro western film - Hombre llamado Noon in 1973) starts off with pure action and the pace never seems to let up. One of the more remarkable things I found in this novel was L'Amour's pacing as a writer. This is lean, pulpy fare that doesn't have time for wasted words and unnecessary distractions. Because of this, I breezed through the book in record time. Even the dialogue kept up with the constant forward momentum of the writing: 

"You should have listened when you had the chance," she said. "Now you have no chance."

"That's a matter of opinion," he said cooly.

"There are five of us," she said.

"But only one that's you," he replied calmly, "and that needs only one bullet."

"You'd shoot a woman?"

He smiled. "You've chosen to play games with the boys, and when you do that, you accept the penalties. I see here only four men and one cold, treacherous wench who would betray her best friend for a dollar."

Oh, did I mention the character Ruble Noon is BASED as fuck too?

This is a dude who gets shot I don't know how many times throughout the course of the novel and is still up the next day to drink black coffee and show off his five o'clock shadow. Of course, Noon was played by a different actor in the film version, but the way he reads in this novel kept making me think of a Charles Bronson type of man's man in the role. The manner in which the amnesia plot surrounding Noon unravels is also highly satisfying, with one particular gut-punch twist that forced me to put the damn book down for about twenty minutes and take a walk. Don't you love when a book throws you like that?

The other characters are your usual assortment of outlaws and bad men, along with a friendly maiden, the treacherous wench quoted above, and a helpful Mexican bandito that Noon busts out of jail because at a certain point the odds are so stacked against him he needs another gun on his side. Some might scoff at how cliched the romance between Noon and the ranch owner Fan is given how quickly they appear to be falling in love with one another, but I accepted it as believable considering Fan has recently lost her father and is surrounded by mostly scumbag ranch hands on her property. When another decent fellow finally comes into her orbit, it's unsurprising she'd be interested in him.

The Man Called Noon culminates in a frenzied search for long-hidden gold somewhere in or around Fan's ranch with more than one set of players vying to get their hands on it first. I won't spoil the finale, but it goes without saying that the lure of gold and riches really does bring out the worst in certain people.

Recommended.

El Borak and Other Desert Adventures (1934 - 1936; compilation 2010)

Before Conan, before Solomon Kane, there was Francis Xavier Gordon, otherwise known as "El Borak". Equally adept with the gun as he is the sword, Robert E. Howard's ass kicking Texan soldier of fortune battles ruthless Turk bandits, surly Afghan chieftains, and wily Russian despots across all corners of the Middle East. It's the kind of fiction that'll put hair on a man's chest, by God!

Full disclosure here: this review is likely going to be pure gushing rather than any kind of nuanced look at a particular book. The reason for this is simple: Robert E. Howard is one of my favorite writers and El Borak is my favorite of his characters - and that's saying something coming from a Conan superfan.

This Del Rey collection features all of the El Borak stories Howard dreamed up in the mid 1930's. As such, for brevity's sake I'm reviewing the entire collection as a whole rather than focusing on each individual story here.

I was initially attracted to the El Borak stories thanks to the promise of western style action in a completely different setting - the "eastern" as some have called it. Although the stories take place half a world away from the Old West, it's fair to say they have all of the same visceral, elemental aspects of a great western story: from the man versus nature survival segments to the blood and thunder of cacophonous battles to the hero who was once renowned as a gunfighter back home, it's all here.

Moreover, it is simply remarkable how well the reader can envision the mountains, gorges, and baking desert plains of the Middle Eastern setting given the fact that Robert E. Howard never ventured anywhere near that part of the world during his lifetime. Howard conjured his Middle East from nothing more than guidebooks he acquired for his personal library. His other characters may have gained more mainstream popularity over the years, but Howard's El Borak tales are the true heavyweights of his writing career, giving the reader a glimpse at some of the very best writing the Texan author was capable of producing.

If I had to pick one of the short stories as a favorite it might be "The Lost Valley of Iskander", which sees Gordon stumbling upon a lost city of Greeks living in a secluded part of Afghanistan. It's arguably the closest any of these particular stories gets to the fantastical, but it features a nice mélange of mystery and survival alongside a grandiose final battle. Howard even works some of his beloved boxing pastime into this story when Gordon has to compete in a meaty bare knuckle brawl with the giant leader of the Greeks for macho supremacy.

This particular compilation uses artwork from Tim Bradstreet with actor Thomas Jane modeling as El Borak. The artwork is a fantastic addition to these stories and makes me pine for an El Borak movie starring Tom Jane we never got to see...

I would be remiss in pointing out that this particular compilation also features stories with two other American adventurers: Kirby O'Donnell and Steve Clarney. While these stories are just as enthralling as the El Borak oeuvre, Howard simply didn't write enough of them in his lifetime for these characters to get their own volumes, so the publishers have (wisely, in my opinion) included them alongside Gordon's adventures. Despite sharing a similar premise of an American in the far east searching for treasure or adventure, both O'Donnell and Clarney have their own personalities. Clarney in particular seems to have more of a wiseass style that readers didn't often see in Howard protagonists. Don't sleep on these stories just because Gordon is out of the picture, they're still fun reads.