Try Alan LeMay.Originally Posted by DDTSGM
He wrote The Searchers and The Unforgiven. While the movie adaptation of The Searchers is a classic, it suffers from hollywoodizing and oversimplifying the protagonist's hatred of the Comanche.
The Unforgiven movie ridiculously cast 31 year old Audrey Hepburn as a 16 year old Texas ranch girl...
Both novels are very authentic portrayals of the waking nightmare of the outer Texas frontier subjected to Comanche raiding in the 1860s.
Well the library doesn't have anything by him, so I'll give some used places a shot. Looks like he also wrote seven or eight other westerns.
Ordered The Searchers and Winter Range, Amazon loves you.
Adding nothing to the conversation since 2015....
The Suicide Motor Club, Christopher Buehlman. Horror.
Tight little novel about a pack of vampires that hunt along Highway 66 in the 1960s.
These are not romantic, tortured, Chippendale vampires but inhuman, vicious serial killers with a specialty in causing traffic accidents on lonely roads and feeding off the victims. There are some stomach churning situations and a particularly loathsome human servant(their "daybitch"). The story follows a grieving woman whose husband and child are murdered and who saw the vampires for what they are. She is contacted by a man who coordinates a motley group of men who are also victims of vampire predation. Offered a chance at revenge, she learns the very shaky, largely theoretical and unproven methods of killing the undead. They amount to virtual suicide, and hope is definitely a part of the plan...as is faith.
I like Vampire lore and this book delves into the nitty gritty of how they survive, how they are hunted and the extreme measures of secrecy that the hunters must use.The religious aspect is given a little more thought than the usual crosses and holy water treatment.
Grim, verging on Grimdark.
I just bought it. It reminds of the movie Near Dark.
Just a dog chauffeur that used to hold the dumb end of the leash.
Just finished The Searchers and you certainly nailed the description.
Adding nothing to the conversation since 2015....
The Comanche were hell onwheelshooves.
If you don't see the problem, you're part of the problem.
Okay I bought it last night. I’m almost done probably a quarter to go. It’s a great read so far.
These aren’t sparkly vampires. These are MHI vamps but the hunters aren’t MHI. One section covers their hunts. It’s violent and dark.
The “day bitch” is one sick dude.
Recommended.
Just a dog chauffeur that used to hold the dumb end of the leash.
Lethal Prey - a new Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers book. A surprise after the last two stinkers. A mild chase after a female serial killer. She kills, the duo methodically works through clues to catch her. Got it from the library, a pleasant few hours read in my chair looking the the cold rain out the window.
End Game - David Balducci - part of a series about two CIA assassins who have a complicated relatioship. It reads well but the action is ridiculous. The author talks guns but makes easy mistakes all the time. The ending is the classic Evil Overlord won't shut up to the chained up good guys.
Cloud Yeller of the Boomer Age, My continued existence is an exercise in nostalgia.
I'll recommend 'Comanches' by TR Fehrenbach (same guy who wrote the great history of the Korean War).
They were a minor tribe on the prairie edge trying to eke out a living hunting buffalo on foot, and picked on by their neighbors. Then they got horses. Hunting bison from horseback works a lot better than on foot. It also gives you the mobility to raid deep into your neighbor's territory. They went from a tribe on the edge to a warrior empire. The first honky/Comanche interactions were the Comanche raiding through the coastal tribes to reach the honky settlements on the coast. At the time no one really knew where they came from; they were like Mongols periodically sweeping in off the steppe. The honkies and coastal tribes allied themselves against the Comanche.
Their world entirely revolved around bison hunting and raiding. They were dominant for a few hundred years - a lot longer than many dynasties in Europe. But when the bison herds were gone, they didn't have a fallback.
There were both scalawags and saints in whatever the BIA was called. One of the saints was trying to help them transition to farming, and reports that it was just incomprehensible to them. "Without hunting and raiding, how will we know the measure of a man, and who should be our leader". It was just too far outside their worldview to comprehend.
Recently finished 'Empire of the Summer Moon' that someone on here recommended. A+, well written, fascinating and brutal. Had never read much about that period of history and the author did a good job of showing the brutality on both sides.
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