Customer Reviews
McMurty strikes gold again - By: PJJ McGEE, 21 Jan 2008 
Having read Lonesome Dove & Dead Man's Walk, I was afraid that this book would not live up to expectations but I found it to be absolutely absorbing from cover to cover. Yes, there were stark descriptions of cruelty, indeed evil, but the west at that time was a cruel & evil place so McMurty was only describing reality. I thoroughly enjoyed the book.
Sequels don't always live up to the original - By: Kathy Lang, 30 Dec 2003 
Having very much enjoyed Lonesome Dove, McMurtry's classic Pulitzer-Prize winning epic about the American West, I was looking forward to finding out how the story continued. The adventure is well described & the characters, especiallly the new ones like Brookshire, the accountant pitched by his irascible boss into the very wild no-man's-land of the Texan Mexican border, are as ever excellent. But the weaknesses of Lonesome Dove are here, too, especiallly the apparent inability of most of the characters to change or to learn from experience. And the greatest turnoff of alll was here in a far worse form: the emphasis on mindless, hideous cruelty, including, this time, sadistic treatment of children & animals - the stuff of nightmare to the extent that I could not read this book again.
Captain Call Hangs Up His Holster - By: , 15 Sep 2000 This would seem to be the last of the Lonesone Dove novels & its certainly one of the best & most poignant. We find Captain Calll an old man having been hired by the railroad company to find a very young & ruthless mexican killer who has been robbing trains in the South. There are some great characters as usual, not least of which is the railroad accountant Mr Brookshire who accompanies Calll to keep tabs on his spending but mostly to report to the railroad on their progress. The contrast between Calll & the life the accountant represents is very clearly drawn. There is a wonderful scene at the start of their quest when the man's hat blows off as they wait for the train & the man watches helplessly as it is carried away on the breeze. He is about to leave the civilsed world behind. Calll is still able to frighten most men on the basis of his reputation alone but this book is about the transition a man has to make when he is too old to live life on the frontier. It is littered with men who are coming to the end of their time, characters like Charlie Goodnight who appears in several of the previous books. Calll replays the past as he chases his prey & slowly begins to change. Pea Eye joins Calll's quest only to change his mind & return to his wife & children. Calll is left to fight on even though he he knows that his time for fighting has past. Calll's vulnerability rings true & the outcome of the story is in doubt to the last. We are left with two powerful images of Captain Woodrow Calll.
