Willie and Mike have written a neat and tidy book that combines all the best elements of a mystery story with the genuine wildness of life in the wide open spaces. Out there sometimes the weather and the environment are your toughest enemies, and this book does a wonderful job of bringing the real wild of the "wild" west to life. From beautiful box canyons full of winding trails and deep chasms where the mist from hidden waterfalls paint rainbows in the air, to the arid desert where a man's blood can dry out from the heat of the sun, the authors paint a very realistic picture of the stark beauty of the desert.
You'd think a trail would be easy to follow in the desert, what with so much sand to leave tracks in, but the wind can shift the sand so quickly that the trail from a hundred head of cattle could vanish within half an hour. But a good tracker doesn't look at the ground when following a trail, he looks for clues rubbed into the bark of a tree or in the twigs of a tree gone missing. In A Tale Out Of Luck the authors lay just this kind of trail for us to follow so we can pick our way through the story. Like all the characters we start off blind to what's happened but gradually we begin to see the big picture and can only hope our heroes and their friends can weather the approaching storm.
A Tale Out Of Luck is well written, with characters that have the ring of truth to them and their actions, offering a nice alternative from the cliches of old that used to encumber Westerns. We meet unexpected good-guys and even more surprising bad guys as our two guides, Willie Nelson and Mike Blakely, lead us along paths that no other western I've read has taken. So sit back and put your feet up by the fire for a spell and enjoy an entertainingly spun tale.
Article comments