Deputy U.S. Marshal

Longarm Double #1

by Tabor Evans

Double-barreled action—the first two Longarms in one volume! LONGARM Longarm has a new mission. Ride to Crooked Lance. Pick up Cotton Younger, killer cousin of Jesse James, from the town jail. Bring him to trial. It should be easy. Except for one Deputy Kincaid has already tried it. And Deputy Kincaid is nowhere to be found. Nobody at Crooked Lance wants Longarm to do his job—not the beautiful widow woman, or the Federal Agent, or the James gang—but Longarm never gives up when he has work to do. Even if it kills him…   LONGARM ON THE BORDER The Mexicans claim it’s a Texas town. The Texans say it’s Mex. Los Perros. A tough, old cow-camp of border-jumpers and price-tagged rustlers—with a “hanging” sheriff of flexible sympathies. The Feds want it cleaned up, the cattle thieves flushed out, the vanished lawmen found. Only one man can do it…

Genres: Westerns

434 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 29, 2008

About the author

Tabor Evans is the author of the long-running Longarm western series, featuring the adventures of Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long. Tabor Evans, is a house pseudonym used by a number of authors. The pseudonym of Tabor Evans would begin in the 1970s when Lou Cameron established it for the Jove Books publishing label. Lou Cameron helped create the character and wrote a number of the early books in the series. The first book was published in 1978. Other authors known to have written books in the series include Melvin Marshall, Will C. Knott, Frank Roderus, Chet Cunningham, J. Lee Butts, Gary McCarthy, James Reasoner, Jeffrey M. Wallmann, Peter Brandvold and Harry Whittington. In addition there are 29 "Giant" editions published as well.

The Longarm series is a mainstay of the "adult western" genre which arose in the 1970s. These books are distinguished from classical westerns by the inclusion of more explicit sex and violence.

Reviews

[John Jambo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Double Western

Both stories kept my interest well past my bedtime many nights. All Tabor Evans books are worth reading and enjoyable.

[Adam Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This volume contains both the first and second novel in the long running adult Western series Longarm. Here are my thoughts on each one individually.

Longarm #1 - Longarm The inaugural novel introduces us to Cust Long, nicknamed Longarm, a deputy U.S. marshal based out of Denver, Colorado sometime in the 1880s. He is a tall, powerful man with the grace of a ballet dancer and the speed of an angry rattler and he sports an iconic handlebar mustache that would make Tom Selleck jealous. We are also introduced to Marshal Billy Vail, Longarm's boss and, to my knowledge, one of the few recurring characters in the series. Vail is the typical police boss, always yelling at Longarm about something he did or said while and reminding him to keep his nose clean. He also provides Longarm with his assignments that become the plots of the novels.

Longarm novels follow a standard formula, 3 graphic sex scenes and 3 graphic shootouts, that being established by series creator Lou Cameron, and this one is no exception. Longarm manages to bed a passel of beauties and blow away a few bad guys along the way while still managing to cleverly outfox his opposition with his brains as well as his six gun. Book 1 was a solid start, Cameron did a good job of giving us a lot of historical fact to go with our sexy and violent fiction and it kept me interested the whole way.

Longarm #2 - Longarm on the Border

Our second book sees Longarm being sent down to the Texas/Mexico border to locate a missing Texas Ranger and U.S. Calvary captain, the Army nor the Rangers wanting to incite an international incident by going in themselves. This book is written by Melvin Marshall with Cameron taking the month off and letting someone else take the reins. Longarm deals with a horny Army wife, a spicy senorita and a hotstuff blonde dancing girl in the sack in this one and manages to beat several men with his lightning gun hand and deadly Winchester rifle along the way. This one actually surprised me with one of the love scenes and if you read it you'll understand.

I have to admit, I love the Longarm books. They're not Louis L'Amour or Zane Grey but they are fun, quick reads that remind me a lot of 80s action movies with plenty of gratuitous sex and violence. Longarm is a hero in the simplest of terms, no deep thoughts, he does what's right because he is serving right. There is no gray area.

I recommend both of these books if you want something fun to pass your day.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sex, Violence and smart ass hombres. This is a wonderful yet did not age well socially western novel. No more white hat vs black hat. It’s a quick read for two novels. And the stories grip you from the first line. Will I read more? Maybe. But I glad I know this series exists. Again, I acknowledge this is not of my era and not socially okay now. But dammit. It’s a fun book as long as you keep that in mind.

[Bo Everett · Rating 2 out of 5]

Leave The Sex Out.

[Les Simpson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Longarm?

Based on the first two novels collected in this edition, I’m not sure how this became the most popular series in the “Adult Western” genre. It is only “adult” in that it includes gratuitous, explicit sex and fairly graphic depictions of violence. Do not expect “adult” to mean dealing with mature themes or challenging ideas. There are none to be found here.

The plots of both stories are very simple and not really worth detailing. That’s why there is a publisher’s summary. Suffice it to say that the plots are very thin with some large leaps in logic to make the titular “Longarm” seem more smart and capable than the characters he encounters. That’s not hard. If the character is male, he exists to either be a bad guy or to admire “Longarm’s”alpha-maleness. If the character is one of the few females, she exists only to throw herself at “Longarm” and have sex, often at weirdly inappropriate times. The last lines of each story has “Longarm” ruminating about these trysts and thirsty for more.

No, wait. There was a female character that was the mother of one of “Longarm’s” sexual conquests. So, almost every female character has sex with “Longarm”…

Anyway, as odd and off-putting as these elements may be, I was more distracted by one other thing. The author/narrator is the only one to refer to the main character as “Longarm”. The others in the story refer to him as some variation of U.S. Deputy Marshall Custis Long. Why call the series “Longarm” if no one in the story calls the character by that name? It boggles my mind more than a bit, and actually makes me want to read a later book in the series (I think there’s a few hundred different stories to choose from) just to see if anyone ever calls Custis “Longarm”.

So, yeah. This was something that I read when exploring various genres.

[Steven Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've always wanted to read the first Longarm books as written by the original author. As long as I have been reading this series, you can certainly tell the different authors.