Book review - "Hondo" by Louis L'Amour (1953)

 Apparently L'Amour's first novel, though the movie was based on a short story and this was a novelisation of the film script. I'm not going to get scholarship-y on it. There's excellent description of action - Hondo tracking and being tracked, the cavalry facing Apaches - though the stuff involving the wife and boy is less strong, more conventional. There's a lot of convenience and repetition in the plotting which feels more like the screenplay though I could be wrong - Vittoro the Apache is quite cuddly, saving Hondo and the woman and the kid and generally looking on a lot as Hondo knocks off people. We are cheated in not reading about Vittoro's death and the final battle feels abrupt. It's like this would be a better novel if the story was slimmed down more and L'Amour made more of big moments. But it was easy and entertaining to read which a lot of terrific stuff.