by Louis L'Amour
Since 1955 L'Amour has been turning out three paperbacks a year, and now, the publisher claims, there are a hundred million copies of his books in print worldwide. This one is not a Western novel, as are most of L'Amour's successful works, but a collection of short stories, the kind that once appeared in adventure pulps. The subjects are war, the sea, a desert fight between the Spanish Foreign Legion and the Moors, a Shanghai mystery and an American Indian tragedy. L'Amour, a direct literary descendant of Jack London, provides bridges between these stories, which are old-fashioned, macho and predictable. But he excels in describing moments of action. Using a minimum of adjectives, L'Amour is surprisingly vivid and convincing. These are the kinds of stories men—and boys—used to read pre-television. (Bantam, $1.95)
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