Everyone knows that Elmore Leonard made his name writing westerns before he turned to writing crime and became world famous. His westerns weren't just horse operas; Leonard reinvented the genre with stone-cold classics like Hombre and Three-Ten to Yuma. The problem was, here in the UK anyway, getting hold of them. Now Penguin have solved the problem, with three of the best published as Modern Classics/Westerns.
Valdez dates from 1970 and has been heavily influenced by Sergion Leone's spaghetti westerns. Bob Valdez is more Lee Van Cleef than Clint Eastwood, a middleaged man good with his guns and good with people. He has few needs and gets by riding shotgun with the stagecoaches and helping out as a part-time constable in a one-horse town in sun-baked Arizona where his Mexican heritage comes in handy.
We start with a shootout. The whole town has gathered to watch. A local worthy, passing through town, has identified Orlando Rincon as the man who shot the sutler at a regional fort. Rincon is now holed up in his cabin with his Native American woman while the township decides who gets to shoot him. Valdez arrives and persuades Rincon to surrender. The shooting starts anyway and Valdez accidentally kills the man he promised to protect.
Valdez feels bad about breaking his word, doubly so when Frank Tanner, the man with the tip-off, reveals he was mistaken and Orlando wasn't the killer after all. Orlando's woman is pregnant and it seems to Bob Valdez she's entitled to compensation. All in all, he decides Frank Tanner should be the one to pay. So he goes to ask him. Tanner's response ... well, that would be giving away a truly stunning plot point.
The story ends with another shootout - and another magnificent twist. Valdez is no more genre fiction than the crime novels that Leonard starting publishing around the same time. It is a short, beautifully written and delicately-nuanced work of literature imbued with humanity and driven by intrinsic human qualities. It's art of the highest quality. I adored it. One hundred percent recommended.
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