Title: The High Graders
Author: Louis L’Amour
Date: 1965
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0-553-24744-1 (for the eighteenth reprint edition)
Length: 168 pages
Quote: “There was no mistake, then; but how in the name of truth could a peace-loving man like old Eli wind up in a grave on Boot Hill?”
That’s what Mike Shevlin has come to Rafter Crossing to find out. When he’s also hired by a bright, pretty heiress to find who’s stealing ore off her ranch, that helps him considerably. Need I mention that the two mysteries will be connected, and that Mike will solve them by shooting a lot of baddies who’ll never be missed?
That summary describes the plot of several western novels so, for those wondering whether they’ve read this one, I’ll add that it’s the one with the fat and lazy baddie in it. As we’ve all seen happen so many times, baddies lose the ability to fight when they look at characters played by James Arness, Lorne Greene, John Wayne, et al., but this one is so dissipated he wouldn’t be able to shoot it out with a character played by Peter Lorre.
But who reads Louis L’Amour’s westerns for the plot? People collect them; they read them as the books on which their favorite movies and TV shows were based. I only bother to describe the plots to cut down on the wanna-be-joke reactions like “I thought this was going to be a nonfiction book about how to get into the right sections of those required courses they make you take in college,” which probably was funny in 1965. Don’t use it now. L’Amour’s reputation is too well established.
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