I read 'The Lonesome Dove' many years ago and when a friend gave me this one I had to read it. Same style, gruesome in the extreme in the style of the wild West, but a well told story and keeps the pages turning. ( )

Western

It is the second book published in the Lonesome Dove series, but the fourth and final book chronologically
Between Lonesome Dove and Streets of Laredo
Between the events of the two books, quite a bit has happened. Lorena, lover of Gus McCrae, has left Clara and married Pea Eye Parker, of the former Hat Creek Outfit. They have several children, and own a farm in the Texas Panhandle. Pea Eye is thoroughly devoted to Lorena, and Lorena has learned to reciprocate and become almost equally attached to Pea Eye. Lorena teaches in a nearby schoolhouse. The cattle ranch (set up by the Hat Creek outfit in Montana) has collapsed. Newt is dead, fallen on by the Hell Bitch. Call has finally admitted to himself that Newt was his son. July Johnson is dead, and Clara lives alone. Call has gone back to being a Ranger and a gun-for-hire. Trains have greatly expanded the reach of civilization and have pushed back the frontier. The American West is no longer rough and tumble, and Captain Woodrow F. Call has become a relic, albeit a greatly respected one. Nineteen-year-old Joey Garza and his deadly German rifle (capable of killing a man at a distance of half a mile) are not about to let law and order close the book on the Wild West just yet.

Cinque stelle. In alcuni punti riesce a essere anche più bello del capolavoro Lonesome Dove, con personaggi a cui eri già affezionato e nuovi a cui volere bene dopo poche pagine. Lo consiglieresti? Tze, che domande! ( )

Although this book wasn't Lonesome Dove, it was still pretty darn good. I read Lonesome Dove years ago and it is still in my top five books of all time. This one skips ahead quite aways from Lonesome Dove. Woodrow Call is 70 years old, and he is hired by the railway to catch a young killer who is robbing trains and killing people all over the panhandle. By the time of this book, Pea Eye is married to Lorena and they have five children, but even so Call asks him to accompany him on the hunt. After much debating with himself and his wife, Pea Eyes does catch up with Call, and they are out in the desert during the cold of a Texas winter, looking for a particularly cold-hearted killer by the name of Joey Garza. In typical McMurtry fashion, there is no shortage of bad guys and colourful characters. There is also no shortage of cracking good sub-stories throughout the book. Also, it is no surprise that we get to know the main characters of the book intimately as the plot unfolds. Characterization is only one of McMurtry's writing skills. This time I listened to the audiobook, and I found it particularly entertaining. McMurtry wrote this book after Lonesome Dove, and then after that he wrote two others in the four-book series. Dead Man's Walk is set in the time when Call and Gus McRae were young Texas rangers and Comanche Moon is set sometime between Lonesome Dove and Streets of Laredo. Now that I've finally come back to this best-loved story, I will continue with reading or listening to the other two books. As with Lonesome Dove, this book has left me with a book hangover, and it will take time to get Woodrow Call, Pea Eye and Lorena and Maria Garza out of my mind Maria, by the way is the mother of the outlaw Joey Garza. She's a truly wonderful character in this book. Highly recommend this book, but it would be a good idea to read Lonesome Dove first before tackling this one. ( )