Arguably the greatest western writer in history, L'Amour sometimes turned his hand in another direction: detective stories. This is a book of his fictional private eyes, police detectives and others, as they solve crimes, bring justice to murderers, and examine the criminal mind -- albeit, in one case, an unwilling, yet unrepentant, one. One of the main characters in several of these stories is a former prizefighter who is starting his career, and continues it in other stories, as a private detective. On his first case, he is deliberately chosen because he can devote ALL of his time to the woman client's case -- in spite of his shame at not being busy and rich. He quickly proves his worth and moves on. Another character is a dedicated police detective--in one story, his best friend is killed and he must follow the truth through politics and false blame, duplicity, murder and unspeakable pain in his own personal, emotional life, to the truth, a truth too terrible to face by any save one as committed as he to the truth, wherever it leads, and justice, come what may. Knowing Louis L'Amour only as a writer of westerns, I was pleasantly surprised by the superiority of his detective fiction. This is a book well worth the reading.