Sun 13 Jul 2014
Western Review: LOU CAMERON – Guns of Durango.
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western Fiction[5] Comments
LOU CAMERON – Guns of Durango. Dell #4694, paperback original; 1st printing, April 1976.
Doc Travis, a native of Texas, went to Harvard Medical School, as it so happened, but before he was able to make his way home, the War Between the States broke out. Drafted by the Union army, he managed to escape and join up with Colonel Nichols’ Irregular Cavalry.
Unfortunately, when the war ended Travis never received his official discharge papers, and not having them, he can’t go home to Texas without them.
Unfortunately, Colonel Nichols is both a scoundrel and a criminal, with perhaps more emphasis on the latter, and he is somewhere now down in Mexico, where another civil war is going on, this one between the troops of Maximilian and the men still loyal to ousted President Benito Juárez. Nichols, as Travis soon discovers, is holed up in Durango with Maximilian and his forces.
And so, reluctantly, that is where Travis, who tells his story himself, must head as well. Once on his way, though, he bounces like a pinball between various encampments of the two opposing sides, with a band of hostile Apaches as a noninterested but still deadly third party. Luckily, for a medical man, Travis is fast with a gun, but even more than that, he has a glib tongue and a fast-thinking mind, all three finely tuned aspects of his being that he’ll need in abundance if he’s going to survive.
Travis leaves a lot of death and destruction in his wake, but it’s his brain-work and cleverness that makes this book a lot of fun to read. It’s also, albeit briefly, a work of detective fiction, too, a fact worth mentioning, even though the relevant passage comes and goes within a page or two.
All I’m saying is that you will need all your wits about you as you’re reading, or you may miss something. Some concentration is needed, more than you can say for the occasional other western you may have recently read. The ending, while satisfactory in most regards, is also left open, suggesting that more adventures of Doc Travis might be in the offing. If so, I don’t know if it ever happened, but it would be welcome news if it did.
[UPDATE] Later the same day. I have discovered that there was an earlier book in the series: Doc Travis (Dell, Sept 1975).
July 13th, 2014 at 5:43 pm
As far as I know, those are the only two books in the series. I read them about 30 years ago and recall liking them a lot.
July 13th, 2014 at 6:24 pm
That’s too bad, if there’s only the two. But maybe we can make up our own story of what comes next…!
July 13th, 2014 at 9:17 pm
Cameron was as talented a writer as he was a cartoonist, a double threat. His books are usually complex, smart, tough, and rapidly aced and he is well worth rediscovery, this and others.
His best art work was done for Gilberton where he drew the Tie Machine and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde adaptations.
July 13th, 2014 at 10:31 pm
I have a story to tell about Lou Cameron. Several months after his death in October 2010, I posted an obituary notice for him here on this blog. I was contacted soon after by his daughter, telling me to retract my post, that her father was ill but still alive.
Since my information had come from Al Hubin, and I’d checked around some, I was fairly sure that I was right, but reporting a death that wasn’t so didn’t seem like a good idea, so I posted the retraction:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=8627
The obituary post I converted to a bibliography of all of Cameron’s crime fiction:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=8502
But the truth eventually came out, and Lou Cameron really had died at or around the time I was informed he had. I don’t know what the daughter had in mind when she had me take down the original post, but any good mystery writer could come up with several good ideas, I should think.
July 31st, 2014 at 12:32 am
I do believe that there are 3 titles in the Doc. Travis series. 1.Doc. Travis 2.Guns of Durango 3.?? I have read the first 2, they are good Westerns to read-funny and fast-paced, including accurate tidbits of historical info. eg.KKK Klan, the Apache,their origin and relationship to the Navajo, Mandan, Siminoles,and Comanche Indians, Quannah Parker,as well as the Mexican Revolution of 1867. The 3rd book is suppose to deal with Doc. Travis finally catching up with Col. Nichols in Baja California. If anybody out there knows the title of this 3rd book, providing it exists, I would appreciate the name.
JT