paul_cornelius's review against another edition
4.0
Arthur Friel is best known for writing adventure novels set in South America along the Amazon or the Orinoco, in Brazil, Venezuela, and Peru. And he usually does so in an efficient tightly knit story of medium book length. So King of Kearsarge is a bit of a change from that pattern. It's set almost entirely in the mountains of New Hampshire, where cold winter and snow replace the heat and humidity of the Amazon basin. It's also on the longish side, being almost double the length of his usual novels. One thing remains the same, however, the presence of dangerous and perfidious Indians. Friel's books are a reflection of their time and indigenous people often do not come off treated fairly. Not always, because he does have some stalwart Indian peoples in his Amazon books. But the only Indian, here, is a French-Indian scoundrel whose treachery and lusts come right out of the worst efforts of stereotyped representations. Jules Black is the worst of a series of cheats, robbers, thieves, and immoral blackguards to infest Kearsarge. In fact, Friel sort of works his way up--or down, as the case may be. His first villain is a womanizing Wall Street manipulator who steals the wife of Don King, Friel's hero. From there, he encounters Sniffy the weasel and his buddy Bull, who are hijackers and robbers who nonetheless seem to draw the line at murder. Onwards we go to Don's wife, Ruth, who is a materialistic woman of easy virtue who betrays Don for the bright lights of society in New York. And, then lastly, there is the malevolent Jules, a murderer, rapist, sadist, torturer.
Friel does another good job of pacing this story and making you want to anticipate the action. He is a good creator of adventure and scenes of cathartic violence. The drawback to Kearsarge is that everything works out too mechanically. People die or get killed conveniently to make a clear path for Don's love of the mountain girl Pansy (horrible it is to keep reading that name throughout, "Pansy girl"). Mistaken identities resulting from deadly accidents help Don along, too. Only the climax with Jules seems natural to the story. And of course its results are a foregone conclusion from the moment you first meet up with Jules. Still this is a good work to examine the attitudes towards adventure, city life, and the rural countryside in immediate post World War I America.
Friel does another good job of pacing this story and making you want to anticipate the action. He is a good creator of adventure and scenes of cathartic violence. The drawback to Kearsarge is that everything works out too mechanically. People die or get killed conveniently to make a clear path for Don's love of the mountain girl Pansy (horrible it is to keep reading that name throughout, "Pansy girl"). Mistaken identities resulting from deadly accidents help Don along, too. Only the climax with Jules seems natural to the story. And of course its results are a foregone conclusion from the moment you first meet up with Jules. Still this is a good work to examine the attitudes towards adventure, city life, and the rural countryside in immediate post World War I America.
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