What do You think about The Burning Hills (1985)?
Oh Louis L'Amour... Who else can write what's basically a romance novel about a horse-wrangler bleeding his way through the Mexico/Arizona desert while bad dudes and Indians chase him? Our hero sets off to kill the horse thieves who shot his bronco-busting partner, but they turn out to be part of the biggest ranch families in the area. So the tables quickly turn and our hero has a gut full of lead. He runs, passes out and wakes up being tended by a fiery-hot senorita. It isn't long before these two are vacillating between making moon-eyes and spitting fire at each other, fighting like angry wildcats. "I KEEL YOU!" she screams."Aw, you just ain't been halter-broke yet!" he shouts back as they wrestle back and forth.Somehow treating this angry woman like a wild horse that needs to be broken turns out to be just the right thing to do and they wind up together in the end, shooting a bunch of bad guys and Indians along the way. Ridiculous fun.Hmmmm.... I wonder if this approach to women still works? Maybe I'll try that with my wife some day, "Honey, you keep on frettin' around like that and yer gonna throw a shoe! What you need is a strong rope, tight reins and a firm hand! And I'm just the cow-poke to fill that role!"
—Tom
A quick break back to fiction after finishing Lawrence in Arabia. I am returning to my project of reading the Louis L'Amour book in chronological published order. The Burning Hills is my 9th L'Amour book this year and is one of two published in 1956. This story opens with the hero of the book Trace Jordan's friend having been killed, their herd of horses rustled and him on the run from the rustlers. Having been wounded in the chase he finds refuge and help from pretty widowed senorita who he quickly falls in love with and endangers since bad guys are closing in.Again like all of L'Amours books very formulaic but fun and quick to read nevertheless.
—Paul
Westerns are not a genre that appeals much to me, so my rating of 2.5 stars certainly reflects that: I simply can't say I liked it. Good guys vs bad guys with a hostile natural environment thrown in for good measure; somehow, against all odds, the good guys win in the end. Yawn. Still, given that prejudice, I have to admit that this particular book was well-written. Not all the bad guys were totally bad; there was a female character who had her own strong personality that didn't quite fit all the stereotypes; and L'Amour's description of the locale, though it took second-place to the action, was still vivid.
—Susan
