Hombre (Elmore Leonard, 1961)

Desiring a quick fiction shot before my holiday this weekend I picked up another in the series that also brought me Double Indemnity and The Maltese Falcon, and like those others, I was mildly disappointed. The connection between these books is that they (along with others including Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep, The Grifters, The Pianist and Minority Report) were all turned into 'classic' movies, and of the 4 I've read so far from this collection (including The Postman Always Rings Twice) I've seen none of the films, so I've come to the books knowing little of what to expect. I don't like reading blurb directly before embarking on a new book too. 

So I wasn't sure what to expect from Hombre. Turns out it's a western. Now, I don't mind the odd big screen western, but I've never read one before, and after this I'm not sure I want to again (though I think The Grifters is one, as I think John Wayne was in the film). Hombre was short and lacking on incident, and a little bit boring. I had to force myself to pick it up and finish it. Oh I'm sure it's a classic of it's genre, it just didn't do much for me. It was all a bit obvious - the narrator, who's no literary masterpiece and has a very basic way of relating events, tells of John Russell, a man who has become a legend from the back of the events described within the book. The plot runs something like this: unlikely group travel on stagecoach, it's held up and a woman is kidnapped as ransom for stolen money, the group follow the robbers and foil their plans. That's about it. And John Russell, the man who has lived (voluntarily) with Indians, is the enigma at the heart of it all, quietly running down the kidnappers and picking them off. Yawn. It probably works brilliantly on screen, not so much on paper.