Scan barcode
A review by angielisle
Milo Talon by Louis L'Amour
3.0
This book has the element I love most from L'Amour - great descriptions! I can imagine everything that L'Amour wants me to see; that's his strong point. This book, like many of L'Amour's books, has typos and printing errors and I lay the blame on the publishers because these books have been out long enough that those errors should be caught and corrected before the next printing.
I figured out the plot almost as soon as the characters were introduced but I'm not sure if that happened because I heard the story in the hazy days of childhood or if it's because the whodunit is just that obvious. I knew what was going on from page one and I'm inclined to think it was from the prior reading.
Milo Talon drives me crazy with the way he solves crimes. Milo has all the info he needs right at his fingertips but doesn't use those tools to figure out what's up. We keep going around and around in his head because he won't stop and take the time to look for the answers to his questions. And because real life detective work doesn't work that way, this book has the feel of a cozy mystery rather than detective noir. That's not necessarily a bad thing - I love cozies which is probably why I like the Talon and Chantry series but, if you're wanting a good detective story, look elsewhere.
L'Amour gets tagged as an author who doesn't depict other races well. He does use the typical (negative) stereotypes in some of his stories but he also surprises me by occasionally throwing in characters who break the stereotypes/tropes that were commonly depicted at the time of drafting/writing. I sometimes think this was his way of fighting the system, to work in those characters when he could get away with it. In this book, Milo depends on a bunch of Latinos for back-up. Some would argue that it's an evolution of the Tonto/side-kick trope, and maybe it is, but I do enjoy his depictions of Mexican-Americans because it isn't the layabout/border-jumping/drug cartel stereotypes that we see depicted so frequently in pop-art today. L'Amour gave us competent Latino cowboys who are good at their jobs - they wouldn't be alive and working if they weren't good at cowboying up (which is accurate to history - a good percentage of cowboys weren't the white boy we see depicted in Hollywood westerns). It was a nice change of pace that gave me an excuse to imagine Emilio Rivera (as Pablo) and Danny Trejo (as Felipe) into the story (and I'm not going to complain about fantasizing about those two).
I figured out the plot almost as soon as the characters were introduced but I'm not sure if that happened because I heard the story in the hazy days of childhood or if it's because the whodunit is just that obvious. I knew what was going on from page one and I'm inclined to think it was from the prior reading.
Milo Talon drives me crazy with the way he solves crimes. Milo has all the info he needs right at his fingertips but doesn't use those tools to figure out what's up. We keep going around and around in his head because he won't stop and take the time to look for the answers to his questions. And because real life detective work doesn't work that way, this book has the feel of a cozy mystery rather than detective noir. That's not necessarily a bad thing - I love cozies which is probably why I like the Talon and Chantry series but, if you're wanting a good detective story, look elsewhere.
L'Amour gets tagged as an author who doesn't depict other races well. He does use the typical (negative) stereotypes in some of his stories but he also surprises me by occasionally throwing in characters who break the stereotypes/tropes that were commonly depicted at the time of drafting/writing. I sometimes think this was his way of fighting the system, to work in those characters when he could get away with it. In this book, Milo depends on a bunch of Latinos for back-up. Some would argue that it's an evolution of the Tonto/side-kick trope, and maybe it is, but I do enjoy his depictions of Mexican-Americans because it isn't the layabout/border-jumping/drug cartel stereotypes that we see depicted so frequently in pop-art today. L'Amour gave us competent Latino cowboys who are good at their jobs - they wouldn't be alive and working if they weren't good at cowboying up (which is accurate to history - a good percentage of cowboys weren't the white boy we see depicted in Hollywood westerns). It was a nice change of pace that gave me an excuse to imagine Emilio Rivera (as Pablo) and Danny Trejo (as Felipe) into the story (and I'm not going to complain about fantasizing about those two).