Longarm

Book 43 Longarm is the series title of a long running action and sex filled western series of paperback books by Tabor Evans. The series is over 300 books so far and still going with new ones coming out on a regular basis. Which is pretty amazing, imagine trying to think up 300 book length plots about a single character.. imagine writing a book every month for over 15 years!

Before I delve into the books, what they're about and why I like them let me give a brief thought to how I got involved. I like action stories, stories with plenty happening, whether its on a spaceship with blasters, in a dark castle with swords or on horseback with six-guns. I picked up some Louis Lamour western stories at the used book store so I didn't have to invest much and really liked them, fairly simplistic stories with a rough tough hero cleaning up the bad guys and usually getting the girl by virtue of being so manly. I went through a bunch of them and cast around looking for something else, perhaps a series with a continuing character. I tried some older writers, Zane Grey for instance but their view of the old west, while probably more accurate is more gritty and dirty and I'm not really interested in details on the spitting and fence mending, besides it seemed like there was less action too.

So I tried a couple of series, I tried "The Gunsmith" series, picked up 3 books and read them and was really unimpressed, far from being a gunsmith, he rarely used his gun at all, in fact one of the stories had a buildup through the whole book to a gunfight at the end and then he avoided it, definitely not what I was looking for. I picked up several of "The Trailsman" and liked them, this was more what I was looking for, he was tough, faced down lots of bad guys, got the girl and surprise! bedded her, plus usually several others. The plots were amazing with the bad guys acting really really bad, and the good guy unafraid to slaughter them if they deserved it. I still collect a lot of Trailsman stories but not as seriously, he is not quite as likable a hero as I want, kind of arrogant and hard to empathize with, though I have to admit he has mellowed a bit with age and the newest stories are great reads!.

I also tried a couple others, "Lone Star" was OK, the idea of a beautiful babe and her ninja sidekick shooting and balling their way through the old west is a little farfetched though.

Then I happened onto "Longarm", using what I learned from collecting "Doc Savage" I figured the early books would be best, the most original, less formula, etc. So I picked up a couple of early volumes for 50 cents each, and really liked them. Longarm was a likable hero, plenty of action, always seemed to do the right thing, always seemed on top of the situation, is quite well endowed and always got the girls, and the plots took lots of interesting twists, check out the plot summaries below to see how you start at one thing and end up completely different. In fact the books tend to be almost like mystery stories as Longarm is trying to figure out what is going on and usually stumbles onto something bigger than he expected.