Law of the Gun

by Elmer Kelton, John Jakes, William W. Johnstone

Law of the Gun (Pinnacle Westerns) [Nov 01, 2010] Martin H. Greenberg and Russell Davis …

Genres: Westerns

356 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Elmer Kelton (1926-2009) was award-winning author of more than forty novels, including The Time It Never Rained, Other Men’s Horses, Texas Standoff and Hard Trail to Follow. He grew up on a ranch near Crane, Texas, and earned a journalism degree from the University of Texas. His first novel, Hot Iron, was published in 1956. Among his awards have been seven Spurs from Western Writers of America and four Western Heritage awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. His novel The Good Old Boys was made into a television film starring Tommy Lee Jones. In addition to his novels, Kelton worked as an agricultural journalist for 42 years. He served in the infantry in World War II. He died in 2009.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/elmerk...

Reviews

[Anne Patkau]

17 short stories. The best tales meet challenges, are deeply developed in restricted few pages. My favorites have memorable unique people and justice prevail:
Barely surviving old gunslinger resists spoiled rich dudes hanging starving pioneer - Johnny D. Boggs. "Lucy Angel" is in court for saving abused girls - Deborah Morgan. Ex-slave Monday learns "shootist" trade fast; bullets blaze into icy sod hut - Russell Davis.

[Lisa]

Weird short Western stories, at least to me.

[Skjam!]

A decent anthology of Western stories with the general theme of gunslingers. (Some stories are considerably less about the gunslinging, one even features a knifethrower as the main character.) The main characters are rather more diverse than people who haven't read a Western lately may expect, women, a former slave, a Jew, etc.

The general tone is melancholy; even if using a gun solves the immediate problem (which it doesn't always, in these stories) the consequences are overall negative. The strongest story in this collection for me was "The Long High Noon" in which two gunslingers attempt to have a final shootout even as the Wild West fades away around them.

For more Western reviews, see http://www.skjam.com/tag/western/

[Fredrick Danysh]

This is a nice collection of old fashioned Western stories by a variety of writers. They were easy reads and do not include the modern trend to sex, profanity, or excessive violence. This book is one that you can let the kids read. There are some moral lessons in the stories.

[Ron]

Great read with some clever stories. Creative takes on the gunfighter genre. Some were better than others as would be expected

If you like westerns, you'll like this.