What do you think?
Rate this book
Give a Man a Gun
191 pages, Paperback
First published December 31, 1989
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 19, 2026
"He had come back here wanting the good fellowship of men and the sweetness of a woman's smile. What he'd found was a fist fight, a woman he couldn't have, and the beginnings of a range war."
Thats on page 99, and is pretty much all you need to know about this one. I used to read a skateboard magazine called Big Brother. In any particular issue you might think you were about to read a review of an album or video, and instead, what you would get would be a man writing about what his cat did that day. Sometimes I'm tempted to do the same. I do have three cats, and they're often just as entertaining as the westerns I read.
I've read a few books by Ernenwein now, and I've noticed he likes to inject a good dose of romance into his rather typical range-war plots. The romance wasn't so bad, but as a writer of paperback originals, Ernenwein's writing style is more a continuation of the type you might have found in the western pulps. This novel in particular contains plenty of corn-pone colloquialisms and characters which haven't quite been updated to the modern era. It took me a minute to find an example, but here's one:
"Here I am, just a man who got lonesome for a look-see at his old stomping ground, and folks keep telling me to hit a shuck yonderly. It don't make sense."
Words like "shuck" and "yonderly" really turn my off when they are used with any regularity. Recently I've read westerns by both Lewis Patten and Marvin H. Albert. Neither writers books have elements left over from the pulp days; or at least nothing so obviously anachronistic. In other words, their writing has a much more serious, and therefore effective tone. Looking at the picture of Ernenwein on the back cover of GIVE A MAN A GUN, I get the impression that he either actually roped cows at some point in his life, or was playing out the ultimate cowboy fantasy. The almost comical cover of this book doesn't exactly belie its contents either. I will say that at least the violence was written well, despite there not being much tension.
The main character, Clee Reno, is a wanted man in New Mexico for having taken part in the Lincoln County War. Jake Orondorf, The Sheriff of Two Tanks Basin, eventually becomes aware of Clee's warrant. Besides the range war that plays out, and the men gunning for Clee, there's also Clee's warrant hanging over him. But despite this, there just wasn't any sense of desperation here. Even so, it was at least a readable western. With Gold Medal Westerns, your likely to have more hits than misses, but usually even the misses aren't as bad as they could be.
Thats on page 99, and is pretty much all you need to know about this one. I used to read a skateboard magazine called Big Brother. In any particular issue you might think you were about to read a review of an album or video, and instead, what you would get would be a man writing about what his cat did that day. Sometimes I'm tempted to do the same. I do have three cats, and they're often just as entertaining as the westerns I read.
I've read a few books by Ernenwein now, and I've noticed he likes to inject a good dose of romance into his rather typical range-war plots. The romance wasn't so bad, but as a writer of paperback originals, Ernenwein's writing style is more a continuation of the type you might have found in the western pulps. This novel in particular contains plenty of corn-pone colloquialisms and characters which haven't quite been updated to the modern era. It took me a minute to find an example, but here's one:
"Here I am, just a man who got lonesome for a look-see at his old stomping ground, and folks keep telling me to hit a shuck yonderly. It don't make sense."
Words like "shuck" and "yonderly" really turn my off when they are used with any regularity. Recently I've read westerns by both Lewis Patten and Marvin H. Albert. Neither writers books have elements left over from the pulp days; or at least nothing so obviously anachronistic. In other words, their writing has a much more serious, and therefore effective tone. Looking at the picture of Ernenwein on the back cover of GIVE A MAN A GUN, I get the impression that he either actually roped cows at some point in his life, or was playing out the ultimate cowboy fantasy. The almost comical cover of this book doesn't exactly belie its contents either. I will say that at least the violence was written well, despite there not being much tension.
The main character, Clee Reno, is a wanted man in New Mexico for having taken part in the Lincoln County War. Jake Orondorf, The Sheriff of Two Tanks Basin, eventually becomes aware of Clee's warrant. Besides the range war that plays out, and the men gunning for Clee, there's also Clee's warrant hanging over him. But despite this, there just wasn't any sense of desperation here. Even so, it was at least a readable western. With Gold Medal Westerns, your likely to have more hits than misses, but usually even the misses aren't as bad as they could be.
Displaying 1 of 1 review