Longarm and the Arizona Flame

#294 - just another good one in the Longarm Series with the Marshal travelling the West and catching the bad guys and loving the ladies. For fun and comfortable reading, you just can't beat the main character, and his tough ole cowboy ways. He can smoke, drink, fight, cuss, escape death, and make love with the best of the best. I enjoy the series and recommend reading Longarm when you just need to let your mind escape for a few hours into masculine fantasy. The series obviously has different writers, all working under the name of Tabor Evans, because the roll of the language and the use of adjectives and adverbs noticeably differ from book to book - but all good!

I have been reading this great series for a long time now.I have a large collection of these editions to pick and choose from and try to keep up with the new ones as well.Among my reviews,there are many, and I have enjoyed them all;although, once in a while, there is one that leaves me somewhat jaded.Those are the ones I label "Whodunnits".When the storyline gets to be a long roundabout,convoluted mystery with lots of motives and summarizing explanations ,with lots of diversions and light on fast action, Old West language,characters,history and enviroment,I am disappointed. I also don't read them in consecutive order,but mix older episodes with recent ones. We all know that Longarm came from West-by-God Virginia, after the end of the Civil War. I don't recall Longarm ever coming across anyone else from "back home" in his travels out west;but he did in "The Kissin' Cousins" Episode 298; which I just finished about a week ago.(see my review February 13,2009).By pure chance ,I started reading "The Arizona Flame" Episode 294,and what do you know,but Longarm meets up with another "blast from the past" in this story as well. I know that there have been a number of writers for this series,their writing styles vary a lot,and this is probably all for the better. Both of these novels are quite similar in that they have excellent storylines,lots of well developed characters,and keep the reader's interest from beginning to end.I can't but suspect that they were both written by the same person.The fact that they both draw on West Virginia for characters only adds to my conviction.I really enjoy the artwork on the covers and it too, seems to change from episode to episode.However; the artwork of recent years falls far short of the great stuff we got in the first episodes and changed dramatically after Episode 58.Check out an early edition and you'll immediately see what I mean.It seems that we now get a clollage of stuff some seen before,some unrelated,,and whatnot,from the art department.Often images and characters appear that are unconnected to the storyline or identifiable characters.Such is the case with "kissin' Cousins" only one shown and who are the men? Now in in "The Arizona Flame we get two gals and some guy ,who could be anyone.To top it all,on "The Arizona Flame " cover, we get a good image of a large square rock which would have been more appropriate for "The Kissin' Cousins".It's only a suggestion,but a Riverboat would have shown more imagination,and for a character ,why not Salty?.One even gets the feeling that the art department may have gotten the covers reversed--but that does'nt even work.With all the "starvin' artists" that must be readily available,surely this can be improved.Maybe they would even read the novels, and then create appropriate artwork for it. All that being said,this is an excellent episode in this top long running Old West series.