Zorro Rides Again

I rediscovered my love of Zorro earlier this year from reading Isabel Allende's book, Zorro. Since then, I have been doing my best to get my hands on every Zorro story by the original creator and author, Johnston McCulley. This book is based on one of McCulley's novels, but has been changed a little bit. I haven't been able to get a copy of the McCulley book that this story is based on, so I can't tell you all the differences, but D.J. Arneson also wrote Zorro and the Pirate Raiders--another book based on a McCulley story. I did read the McCulley book that the Pirate Raiders was based on and it was nearly word for word identical with the main difference being in the McCulley story, all Zorro's friends knew he was really Diego Vega. In the Arneson book, only his father, Friar Felipe and his servant Bernardo know his secret identity. My guess is that this book is probably the same--the difference being that Zorro's identity is still a secret. I really enjoyed this story. It is full of action, bravery, honor, and of course evil bad guys. In this story, Zorro must find a way to catch the man who has been posing as him but also has been terrorizing innocent people and ruining Zorro's good name. He must do it in a way that proves to all the people that there are two Zorros, one imposter who is bad and one who is still beloved by the people. If he doesn't do it just right, there will be many people who will continue to believe Zorro went mad and changed. I found the way Zorro handled this problem to be more convincing than in the other book by Arneson (The Pirate Raiders). In the Pirate book, I felt worn out on behalf of my hero, Zorro. At least in this story, he did take a few hours here and there to rest and eat.