Sackett [Mass Market Paperback]

The novel SACKETT is about a young man named Tell Sackett. He fled to Texas where he discovers a vein of gold. After the locals find out some of them begin to get greedy. They try to do a number of things to Tell but nothing can discourage him. In the end Tell gats the gold and gets the ranch he always wanted. This book was very good just because of the fact that he puts so much great detail into the novel everything seems so real. It was an excellent book.

At one time I had collected all the Louis L'Amour westerns, and read all of them; some several times! I would read some of the better ones whenever I needed a bit of escapism! My father(an ex-Gurkha Major) introduced me to L'Amour westerns while I was at boarding school, and I've enjoyed them ever since. I must admit to really appreciating the Sackett stories, the family connections give it an element of realism.

"... if the folks who believe in law, justice and a decent life for folks are to be shot down by those who believe in violence, nothing makes much sense. I believe in justice, I believe in being tolerating of other folks, but I pack a big pistol ... and will use it when needed." - Tell Sackett in SACKETT (while making a promo sound bite for the NRA)

"I'm just a man tries to do the right thing as well as he knows. Only, the way I figure, no man has the right to be ignorant. In a country like this, ignorance is a crime. If a man is going to vote, if he's going to take part in his country and it government, then it's up to him to understand." - Tell Sackett in SACKETT (while espousing, perhaps, English literacy as a prerequisite for voter registration)

Last Sunday, I found myself in an unusual (for me) and precarious situation. I was left with nothing to read while waiting for my wife to conclude her gym session. (I'm not an unmitigated lump; I'd just completed my 45-minute workout. I'm just not as driven.) For all I knew, I might be lingering for a seeming eternity if she'd gotten up a good head of steam on the treadmill. Luckily, the YMCA facility we frequent has a book exchange corner where members can donate used volumes. Pawing through the inordinately large number of bodice-ripper romance novels, I discovered a dilapidated copy of SACKETT, one in a series by Louis L'Amour about the fictional Sackett family of the American Old West.

Mind you, though my Mom discovered L'Amour several years ago and I, as a dutiful son, acquired for her all of this author's books I could find - dozens upon dozens, I've never read one of his sagebrush operas myself. The novelized Old West is rarely visited by me, though Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry was magnificent, especially the incomparable TV miniseries adaptation (Lonesome Dove [1989] [DVD]) with Robert Duvall.

I read the first twenty pages of this 150-page paperback before my wife emerged sweaty but triumphant. Surprisingly, I found the book engaging enough to take home and finish before continuing with Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places by Bill Streever.

Here, William Tell Sackett, the oldest of three Sackett sons, is in his third decade of a hard, wandering life. While his younger brothers got themselves some book learnin', he rode the Mississippi flatboats, prospected the Nevada Comstock, fought Johnny Reb with Grant, tussled with Injuns in the Dakotas, Minnesota and Texas, and drove doggies to Montana. The reader initially finds a homesick Tell as he's on his way to New Mexico to visit Ma and his siblings and as he stumbles across an isolated gold mine first excavated by long-dead Spanish conquistadors who'd presumably gotten themselves lost in the wilderness. And where there's gold, a heap of trouble is sure to follow.

SACKETT is, I gather, Western pulp fiction at its most formulaic. The plot contains the standard elements: the square-jawed, noble (and singing!) cowboy, the faithful horse, contemptible scoundrels, weather inclement enough to kill city dudes and the otherwise foolhardy, close-run escapes, desperate shootouts, spectacularly wild terrain, lost treasure re-discovered, and, since a cowpoke's horse can provide only so much companionship and can't cook up a mess of sourdough biscuits over the campfire, the girl of the hero's fevered dreams. (There are no marauding redskins. Perhaps they'd already been slaughtered or confined to a reservation to run a gambling hall.) LONESOME DOVE is just as predictable, of course, but SACKETT's much shorter length only accentuates the recipe for the creation of such in the genre while keeping plot subtleties to a minimum; it's a very fast read. No wonder Mom went through them so quickly and kept me on the rummage for more.

I ordinarily wouldn't give SACKETT more than three stars since I suspect there's not much to distinguish it one way or another from its numerous sister L'Amour Westerns on the bookshelf. But, since the book (and probably any one its siblings) is the absolutely perfect, mindless diversion should you find yourself in the slow line at the postal orifice or immovable on a freeway stopped dead by an overturned farm produce truck, I'll gift four.