Loren Writes
In this, the first, of what would be a series of twelve books featuring Jim Lassiter, the prototypical gunman his father Zane Grey created and to which all other great gunmen are compared, Loren Zane Grey has tried to take us back to the years before "Riders of the Purple Sage" to give us a glimpse of the man and how he lived and what he did. Did he succeed? I'll leave that up to you. For me he didn't. But I know it is awfully difficult and dangerous to compare father and son. And despite Loren's own claim in People Magazine that he defied anyone to tell the difference between what he and his father wrote during the editorial process of readying some of the last manuscripts for publication--Black Mesa, The Reef Girl, and others--his style and writing of these books in no way compares to Zane Grey's, in descriptive quality, character development, or tone. That is not to say these books are not worth reading; they just don't match up with his father's work or legacy.
