YMMV / Louis L'Amour

• Alternate Character Interpretation: In "Trouble Shooter" Hopalong and hs companions find the skeletons of two members of an outlaw gang who'd pulled off a major heist. One of them was killed with a knife by his comrade Diego, and Diego was then shot by the third man, Fan Harlan, who walked away with the money. It's never revealed though whether Diego knifed that other man as part of a double-cross, or whether it was in self-defense when the other man tried to double-cross him. Nor is it revealed whether Harlan was partners with whichever one of those two was the double-crosser, or if they were scheming to kill their partners and take the money independently of each other.
• Fair for Its Day: Some of his comments on women can seem misogynistic, with them frequently being a Neutral Female, but he always said women should be strong minded and speak their mind, someone "To walk beside, not having them walk behind their husband." His treatment of Mexican, African-American and Native-American characters is also generally sympathetic and nuanced, with him even having some interracial romances, like the Egyptian Zara Hammedan and "Ponga Jim" Mayo in South of Suez from 1942 and Mexican-American Drusilla Alvarado and Tyrel Sackett in The Daybreakers in 1960, when such things were pretty frowned upon. However, it wasn't always and it can be pretty cringeworthy that a minor character in "Catlow"(not even an African-American, but a Native-American) is known to his friends as "Nigger Jim" even if his brief portrayal did establish him as an honest, hard-working cowhand, with his friends making sure to send a share of the cattle drive money to his girlfriend.
• Fanfic Fuel: Whatever Tell Sackett was up to in the Civil War, especially considering L'Amour was going to write a whole book about it before he died.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Many of his characters smoke in the novels. Louis L'Amour was a smoker and died of lung cancer.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In Fair Blows The Wind, Tatton Chantry and a rogue are having a swordfight, in the ruins of a castle and both end up realizing the other swordsman is also a master swordsman. After a bit of fighting, the rogue eventually asks "Who are you?".
  • The love interest in Flint is named Nancy Kerrigan.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • The Rustlers of West Fork: Teilhet is an elderly, dishonest settler who went from selling moonshine out of a tent and letting his lone assistant rob passing wagons to building a town that avoided succumbing to economic downturns and Apache attacks. His businesses cater to both honest citizens and the people who he knows are robbing and killing those citizens. During the main story, Teilhet lets his trusted bartender Mark work for outlaw kingpin Avery Sparr but stays on the sidelines himself unless he is trying to stop outlaws from Bullying a Dragon. As Hopalong Cassidy brings down the Sparr empire and shuts down another saloon that caters to outlaws, Teilhet sees the writing on the wall and recognizes that he is too old to lose his livelihood. He reluctantly fires Mark, gives him enough money to start over and, with some difficulty, convinces him that his side has lost and he needs to leave town ahead of the approaching heroes. His pragmatism pays off, as despite his unsavory past and association with Sparr, Teilhet gets to stay in town and keep running his saloon after a tense but cordial encounter with Cassidy.
  • Catlow: Abijah "Bijah" Catlow is a brave, rambunctious, and surprisingly crafty cow hand who earns the wrath of arrogant Cattle Barons with a Start My Own scheme that threatens their profits. A Crime of Self-Defense against a Dirty Cop makes Bijah a wanted man. Catlow seeks revenge by stealing their cattle, and luring a hired assassin into a fatal trap. He graduates to less justifiable crimes like trying to steal $2 million in silver from the Mexican government to finance a new life with his girlfriend Cordelia even though he already has a modest nest egg. Catlow is characterized by his ability to make friends, his bravery in a fight, his loyalty and consideration to his allies, his ability to be a Graceful Loser, his close friendship with his pursuer, U.S. Marshal Cowan, and his ability to adapt his plans in the face of adversity. Even when the robbery fails, Catlow keeps his surviving men from being arrested, turns himself in out of respect for Cowan, and then promptly breaks out of jail. Catlow then goes straight, takes Cordelia to Oregon for an honest and prosperous life, and names his first child after Cowan.
  • Son Of a Wanted Man
    • Ben Curry runs an outlaw empire that contains almost 1,000 men (outlaws, spies, keepers of safehouses, etc.) and controls more territory than New York State. Ben is a fearless gunfighter and brilliant strategic strategist who plans large scale robberies and rustling operations across the country, while leaving honest citizens in his own neighborhood alone and knowing how to avoid particularly tough and honest lawmen. Despite his capacity for violence, Ben strives to keep his operations as bloodless as possible, and none of his men dare to defy him on this issue. His mountain hideout is carefully constructed to provide Ben protection against threats from both outside and within. Ben has a secret family he plans to join full-time in peaceful retirement as soon as his adopted son Mike Bastion learns the necessary skills and values to succeed Ben as boss. Ben ultimately respects Mike’s decision not to take the outlaw path and joins Mike in protecting Ben’s family from treacherous gang members, prioritizing their safety over his own.
    • Rigger Molina is an outlaw lieutenant with a reputation for being the most Ax-Crazy members of Ben Curry’'s empire. However, acquaintances outside of the gang describe a different side of Molina, recounting his easygoing attitude, gentle nature towards prostitutes, and how he once carried the Sole Survivor of a Posse several miles to a doctor after singlehandedly wounding the man and killing his four companions. Rigger’s rivals send him to attack a heavily guarded gold train while they launch a coup against Ben and lie about how well-defended it is. Rigger sees through this Uriah Gambit and returns to protect Ben and seek revenge. Molina faces one of Ben's key betrayers in a duel and kills the man despite being outdrawn and shot five times, walking over to spit on the traitor's corpse and curse him before collapsing from his own wounds.
  • The Burning Hills: Jacob Lantz tracks down any enemies of autocratic Cattle Baron Bob Sutton (and later Sutton's son-in-law Ben Hideman) who flee rather than fight and has never lost a quarry’s trail before being sent after Trace Jordan. Lantz’s gut instincts, keen eyes, knowledge of the vast terrain, and patient, calculating nature let him figure out many of Jordan’s escape routes and hiding places even while Jordan is being sheltered by a local family. Lantz helps his companions corner Jordan but stays out of the ensuring gunfight once it becomes clear that Jordan has both the moral high ground and the skill to defeat all five of his remaining pursuers. Lantz then helps treat the injuries of the wounded Hindeman and goes to deliver a message to the rest of the SB men that the feud is over. He puts up an impressive (albeit off-screen) fight and chase after his mission is interrupted by an Apache war party.
  • Bowdrie's Law: Charlie Venk is a charismatic outlaw who is willing to commit murder but once kept an associate froom killing an innocent bank teller and then easily outdrew the resentful associate in a duel. When another of his partners wakes up early in a failed attempt to steal a robbery’s proceeds, he finds Charlie already gone, and his own share still there. Charlie escapes being lynched by swapping places with a brutal sheriff in the dark right before the hanging, slugging the lawman, and mimicking his voice. Even while he's on the run for murder, he takes the time to fall in love, tricks three rival suitors into picking a fight with him, and beats all of them at once. Even after Charlie narrowly loses a duel to a lawman he led on a chase through Injun Country, the man is charmed enough by Charlie to only wound him and let him see his girlfriend on their way to prison.
• One-Scene Wonder: They show up quite a bit, in good Western style, but one standout is Made of Iron Badass Bystander Johnny Mulhaven from Monument Rock, a cowboy who walks in on a bank robbery, and kills one of the robbers while wounding another over the next two pages or so despite being shot again and again but still not going down, to the point where he even survives, or at least is last mentioned as still fighting for life after the posse led by his brothers leaves.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Lila, even though she appeared in 3 Sackett novels and was mentioned in a fourth, many feel she should have even more development, being a tall, strong and beautiful swordwoman, that even Barnabas Sackett was awed at, at times.
  • The unnamed sheriff from "Last Stand at Papago Wells". His nephew was killed by two of the main characters in self-defense and he pursues them but based on his last moments maybe could have realized his nephew was wrong and reached an understanding with them. He also survives the initial Apache attack. He never encounters his nephew's killers, or any other characters and proceeds to commit suicide after a brief montage lasting just a couple paragraphs when he's stranded on foot without water.
  • Punch-Clock Villain, Scarily Competent Tracker Jacob Lantz is one of the more interesting characters in "The Burning Hills" but after surviving the climatic shootout is randomly killed in an Indian attack off-screen in a way with no bearing on the plot.
  • In "Catlow" Bill Joiner gets an introduction as a competent, yet potentially untrustworthy guy but is never mentioned again in the story, with it being unclear if he ever survived. Jake Wilbur also disappears from the plot after getting some establishment as a gang member with divided loyalties.
  • Mitt Ford in "The Man Called Noon" is a former rustler and the only person to have ever survived a fight with Noon before, and is willing to come back and seek revenge on Noon. He could have been a good recurring presence throughout the novel, either as an archenemy figure, or an Anti-Villain used to explore the Gray-and-Gray Morality of what Noon did as an assassin. Instead he shows up for less than a page to randomly announce his name, draw on Noon and be shot down without fanfare in a way with no impact or importance.
  • Roy Kittery in Matagorda is the only member of Tom's faction of feudists who is confirmed to be a blood relative of Tom, and survives with a wound after one shootout, but is a Flat Character and never even has his exact relationship to Tom mentioned.
  • Trulove, Macon and Mordecai Sackett from "Ride the River" are a pretty impressive group of relatives brought in as The Cavalry and but each only appears in a single scene and they never appear in any of the later books despite the potential to see what they were like as Cool Old Guy characters. Somewhat justified, though, as Ride the River was the 2nd to last Sackett book published before L'Amour's death, the final being Jubal Sackett, set in the 1600s.
  • Rigger Molina in The Trail to Peach Meadow Canyon and its extended version Son of a Wanted Man is a outlaw lieutenant with some good Hidden Depths who outwits a Uriah Gambit he's set up to die in, and returns to defend the life of a leader who had never realized how loyal he was, yet that happens entirely off-screen and it's implied that Rigger is mortally wounded in the process.
  • J.J. Battles in "The Lonely Men" is a decently developed ally whose fate is never revealed after he's lost in a Thirsty Desert when it felt like he was being set up to reappear and help clear Tell's name after being one of the few witnesses to Tell's Mercy Kill of an associate. Billy Higgins. From that same book, having Billy Higgins be a member of the family the Sackett's feuded with who'd somehow put the feud behind to befriend Tell (rather than just having that falsely alleged to give Tell a motive for killing him) would have been interesting.
  • Dan Timm in "Utah Blaine" is another of the well-developed but unfortunately killed off companions variety.
  • Roy Harding and Hans Krueger in "Shalako", neither of whom gets too much focus despite Krueger scaring off some treacherous outlaws despite an Agonizing Stomach Wound while having Face Death with Dignity attitude about how it may kill him. He could have been a good Handicapped Badass character for the rest of the book if it hadn't. Unfortunately, he doesn't survive that stomach wound. Harding gets some good fight scenes and characterization as one of the only hired men who didn't rob and abandon the aristocrats they were hired to guide, but gets a Dropped a Bridge on Him fate.
  • Nick Bardle from "Sackett's Land" and "To the Far Blue Mountains" just disappears from the story after an encounter where he kills Barnabas's father-in-law, when it might have worked better to combine him with another, less important pirating villain, Jonathan Delve.
  • Corrupt marshal Hick Sutton in "The Empty Land" is easily defeated, run out of town by people far worse than him, and never hear from again, while his sons/deputies are killed. It could have been interesting seeing him show up, broken and try for revenge against either the local claim-jumpers who'd run him out of town or the more sympathetic Professional Gambler who killed his sons in self-defense.
  • Leven Proctor of the rustling gang in "The Rustler's of West Fork" gets a bit of decent development and Even Evil Has Standards moments before getting arguably the most anti-climatic death in the climax.
  • Walsh from Callaghen gets some decent prominence in the first part of the novel as one of the men who braves the Thirsty Desert with the eponymous character after a fight with Indians but then disappears from focus.
  • Clyde Fetchen from "The Sky-Liners", a member of the Fetchen clan who stands out a bit from the others by actually showing some capacity and skill for honest work but never exchanges any dialogue with Flagan and Galloway (who've killed one of his relatives) and completely disappears from the story after less than a page. Presumably he's one of the three unspecified Fetchen's to Screw This, I'm Outta Here a couple chapters before the end of the book but there is no build-up or explanation behind this.
  • In "The Sackett Brand" there's an offhand mention of someone named Skeeter Allen, either the brother or father of a man killed by Flagan and Galloway and also either a brother or nephew of the Big Bad. He's said to be out for revenge (although apparently he doesn't know of his Big Bad relative's crimes) and considered to be a formidable force in a fight. He's then never mentioned again in the story.
  • Ollie Fenelon in "Over by the Dry Side" is implied to be a relative of the leader of the outlaw gang (as well as the female protagonist) in his first scene but then just becomes a random Mook without much significance or characterization.
  • Tim Oats in "Ride the River" gets some characterization as loyal to his boss but if nothing else less ruthless or untrustworthy than most of the other gang members. This doesn't really add up to anything and he disappears after being beaten up by Dorian Chantry, either killed or taken prisoner by Trulove and Macon Sackett without it being established which.
  • Bounty Hunter Mark Billings in Taggart is described in terms that paint him as being Made of Iron, and a Morality Pet to his ruthless leader Pete Shoyer. Unfortunately, Mark dies of wounds received in a fight with a Native American war party before actually appearing in the story.
  • In 'Radigan,' Loren Pike is a legendary gunslinger who arrives as The Cavalry about halfway through the book, and has cousins who feuded with the villains in the past (with members of both families dying). Unfortunately, Pike is a Flat Character who never mentions his cousins and doesn't get a fight scene to back up his reputation as a gunslinger.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Sackett twins Nolan and Logan never appear together or even talk about each other and never experience n Identical Twin Mistake.
  • "Passin' Through" reveals that there are surviving female members of the Higgins family that had a long and bloody feud with the Sacketts yet none of those Higgins women ever have an encounter with a Sackett unless, as some fans theorize, the eponymous character of "Passin' Through" is a Sackett (and even if he is, Mattie's Higgins ancestry is only mentioned at the very end of the book and not in a way which affects their interactions).
    • The Sackett-Higgins feud in general is quite underused, as almost nothing is said about the cause of it, any Sackett fatalities, or whether all of the Higgins were bad like Long Higgins (whose death at the beginning of The Daybreakers ends the feud). Even Ride the River doesn't touch upon this, despite featuring the generation of Sacketts before the main one.
  • In "Showdown at Yellow Butte" Dornie Shaw never finds out that his employer was the bandit who'd slaughtered a wagon train he was part of as a child.
• Vanilla Protagonist: On occasion L'Amour has some pretty good supporting characters who outshine the protagonist.
  • Boone's brothers Johnny (the youngest and best horseman of the brothers, who faces five men in a fight and one point and has the best developed romance of the brothers), and Lisha (who has a good jailbreak scene) in the short story "From the Listening Hills".
  • Some of Ponga Jim Mayo's crewmen from the World War II stories are more colorful than their generic action hero captain.

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