Looking For a Good Book

I have enjoyed reading Louis L’Amour books. Not just his westerns (which I do like), but his few other books, more adventure titles and historical fiction (ala The Sacketts series). And I’ve been aware that since his death in 1988 a number of his unfinished works are either being finished by his son Beau, or presented in collections of “Lost Treasures.”

Skyring Water is a thriller based on a first draft that Louis L’Amour wrote many years ago, when he was still trying to be considered for more than just a ‘western’ author. Even so, L’Amour (according to his son Beau at the back of the book) recognized that it didn’t live up to its full potential. Louis and Beau plotted some potential changes to the original work, but Louis died of pneumonia before he could complete the work. Now Beau has taken up the mantle and decided to finish it. Sadly, this still doesn’t live up to its potential.

We’re in a period known as the Cold War and former Navy man, Mike Fowler, is working with a former German scientist, Anton Voss, to deliver arms and information  to anyone willing to pay for it. But Anton has his sights on something a little bit bigger. Anton wants to recover a sunken German submarine which contains 30 million dollars worth of Nazi gold.

Fowler is up for such an incredible potential windfall and the pair put together a team who should be able to do the deep dive to retrieve the gold. But keeping such an incredible opportunity a secret is hard to do and now there are Americans, Germans, Israelis, and various, miscellaneous groups of individuals all out to remove Fowler and Voss from the project and to take the money for themselves.

The opening chapter of this book was exactly what you want from a thriller of this nature. It was high-speed, exciting, and really made the reader want to know more about the character(s) and what they were going to do next. But the opening chapter is an outlier in this book.

The rest of story is generally filled with copious amounts of descriptions, deep dives (pun intended) into character backgrounds, and lots and lots of dialog between the characters about what they should do and what dangers lie ahead. But the dangers themselves seem remote at best and nothing that someone of Fowler’s background couldn’t handle in his sleep.

Essentially, this is a thriller without thrills.

I think that Louis L’Amour was an amazing storyteller. Whether you like westerns or not, he knew how to spin a yarn and I think it’s telling that he knew this book wasn’t up to where he wanted it and even being reworked by someone who knew Louis L’Amour better than most, it still isn’t.

Looking for a good book? Skyring Water by Louis L’Amour and Beau L’Amour was a work that Louis L’Amour didn’t think was ready for publication, and publishers seemed to agree. Even reworked, it’s still wasn’t ready.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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Skyring Water

authors: Louis L’Amour and Beau L’Amour

publisher: Bantam

ISBN:  9798217302468

hardcover, 528 pages