Synopsis/blurb...........They laughed at Roberto Valdez and then ignored him. But when a dark-skinned man was holed up in a shack with a gun, they sent the part-time town constable to deal with the problem -- and made sure he had no choice but to gun the fugitive down. Trouble was, Valdez killed an innocent man. And when he asked for justice -- and some money for the dead man's woman -- they beat Valdez and tied him to a cross. They were still laughing when Valdez came back. And then they began to die...One of my first introductions to crime fiction was Elmore Leonard. I spotted a blurb by Stephen King on a late 80’s or early 90’s book. My reasoning was, if I like King and King likes Leonard, I ought to try him. Whilst over the past 20-plus years, I have come to take a lot of author recommendations of other authors as a bit of a mutual, sycophantic back-slapping that isn’t necessarily to be trusted; this time he was on the money. Obviously, the last remark was part tongue-in-cheek, but you can’t tell me it doesn’t go on.Anyway after reading one Elmore Leonard, either Unknown Man No. 89 or The Hunted or 52-Pickup, I was hooked on the guy. It’s been a one-way love affair that has endured ever since. I’ve back-tracked on his earlier books, mainly Westerns when he started out writing and stuck with him to the present day with his Raylon character and the spin-off hit TV series, Justified. He’s had a few books that haven’t rocked me in this period, but he has consistently entertained and remained in my all-time top 10 author list.Valdez Is Coming was a re-read for me. It’s a western originally published around 1970, with a film I think the following year with Burt Lancaster; one which I can’t recall ever seeing. This was selected as the May read for Pulp Fiction group members and as it was a while since I read “Dutch” I wasn’t too unhappy. Bob Valdez is a lowly sheriff, employed mainly to stop the town drunks from killing each other when they’ve had one too many. Valdez is called to a stand-off where a black man and his Indian wife have been holed up in a shack with a gun-toting mob taking pot-shots at them. Tanner the local big-shot has claimed the fugitive is an army deserter who killed a man. Our protagonist, Bob gets suckered into killing him, when his efforts to defuse the situation fail. One unhappy pregnant widow and one unhappy sheriff bury the unfortunate victim as the mob and Tanner ride off into the sunset heading for the nearest tavern without a backwards glance.Valdez asks the town folk to take up a collection for the widow unsuccessfully; before approaching Tanner to get him to contribute some money. Tanner takes exception to Valdez’s request and after being humiliated a few times, Valdez responds by kidnapping the women who is living as Tanner’s wife. Un-used to defiance from anyone and desperate to retain face, Tanner starts a man-hunt for Valdez. Now that the sheriff has stood up to Tanner, the course is set for a collision between an immovable object and an irresistible force. Light v. Dark, Good v. Evil.I enjoyed this book (again), reading the 200-odd pages during the course of a lazy day. Valdez is a moral, upright man, prepared to stand up for what he believes in, but only after enduring severe provocation. Courageous, spirited, tough, resilient, cunning and intelligent; Bob Valdez is a man to admire.4 from 5I couldn’t find my copy at home, so borrowed this from my local library.
If you know anything about Elmore Leonard's style, you've probably been told one of two things: His prose is "spare," and the way he writes dialogue is beyond compare (him and Mark Twain. They can listen to people, and write the way people talk--a deceptively difficult skill to master). Leonard's dislike of adverbs, of any speech attribution other than "said," of prologues--of any superfluous words--has been well and truly immortalized in his 10 Rules of Writing that he wrote for the New York Times in 2001. (You know you are indelibly associated with something when The Onion uses it as the basis for your obituary.)What the ten rules boil down to is this: every single word that Elmore Leonard uses moves the story forward. He wastes nothing. He gives nothing away, either: he may tell you what a character is thinking, but he will never tell you what a character is planning. He may tell you what a character's doing, in which case he doesn't feel the need to tell you what the character's thinking. He doesn't waste time setting scenes or describing landscapes, unless you need to know what the landscape looks like, in which case he tells you in the fewest possible words. He reminds me of Dashiell Hammett and other mid-century male crime/noir authors--stories where Men Are Men, Actions Are Self-Explanatory, and If You Can't Follow Along You're Not Paying Enough Attention. Even if you don't like Westerns or crime novels, if you like to observe different authors' styles, you could do much worse than checking out Elmore Leonard.So. Valdez is Coming. In a small Arizona town, the town constable (Valdez) has killed an innocent man. When he tries to get the town to make amends, he's beaten and mocked.And then the town finds out what Valdez--who has lived in their midst for ten years, but who nobody really knows--is capable of.It's a deceptively simple tale with a very easy premise. Leonard probably could have told it as a short story, rather than a novel, if he'd had a mind to. But when you read it, with Leonard's trademark taciturnity, with no words wasted, you know that the story is exactly as long as it needs to be. Ironically, it is because the prose is so spare that the story gets away with being as long as it is (in the hands of a lesser author, like me for example, it would've bogged down and gotten completely boring and lagging in the middle, and I would've been justifiably critized for putting in too much narrative padding). And it is Leonard's disinclination to over-explain that keeps the climax of the book a surprise for the reader, even though you suspect all along what the ending will be or must be (this is a Western, after all, there's only a few ways it could end).So yes. You should read this book. It's not just a good story, but it's a story told by a master, a guy who managed to simultaneously impress book critics and literature professors and ordinary readers. I will be finding more Elmore Leonard to fill my life.
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I sat down late yesterday afternoon to read Valdez Is Coming. I never stopped until finishing it. This, this is what a Western (or any story from any genre) should be. The characters for the most part are neither good people nor bad people, each with validation for what they do, each roaming in the gray area we all do. The main character Valdez is one of the most fascinating characters I've come across. After being humiliated and mistreated, he will do just about anything for vengeance and does, yet even when he slips into less than desirable actions, the reader understands and supports his plight.I won't say anymore than that for fear of ruining the story, what is one of the best page-turners I've ever read. Even if you don't like Westerns, this book is for you.Oddly, to my fellow authors, Elmore Leonard breaks some of the biggest rules in Valdez Is Coming. There is a tense change in the beginning and point-of-view slips. Yet Leonard pulls these off with stunning style and it was only going back and looking through the book a second time did I really notice the rule-breaking. Quite astounding.
—Mark Stone
There are two sides to Valdez. One side is Bob Valdez, a respectable constable, business like in his approach to handle conflicts in town. This is a peaceful, calm and reasonable Valdez, one who will talk and listen and reasonably work things out. Then there’s Roberto Valdez. There’s a little bit of Charles Bronson and Rambo in Roberto Valdez. His knowledge of battle tactics, weaponry and vigilantism might make these two green with envy. I also see a little of the Hulk in Roberto Valdez. No, he
—Franky
Quiet, part-time town constable Roberto Valdez is called in when a mob has tracked down a black man who is accused by Tanner, a rich businessman in town, of being an Army deserter and murderer. Roberto tries to diffuse the situation and is forced to shoot the man, who was holed up in a house with his pregnant girlfriend and turned out to be totally innocent. When Valdez goes to Tanner to ask for reparations for the man's wife, Tanner's crew beats Roberto and tries to crucify him, leaving him for dead. They should have made sure they finished the job. Because everyone in town underestimated him. And only a few remember that Bob Valdez used to be a real badass back in the day, and when he comes for you, he comes strong. He's already tried to talk to them as civilized men but they wouldn't listen. But this time, maybe they'll listen to bullets.This early Elmore Leonard western showcases the same lean and witty prose that eventually made his later crime novels so popular. Sparse and direct writing work so well with Western fiction, and Leonard was one of the best writers in the genre. There are not many wasted pages in the book and I love the classic tale of a man who has shelved his violent past, but must bring it back in order to right a major wrong. A fast and enjoyable read.
—Richard Vialet
