The Haunted Mesa by Louis L'Amour - Book Review

Louis L'Amour's novels and short story collections were a fixture of every bookstore and book section I ever perused as a child, teenager, and 'new' adult. They were everywhere and inescapable.

Although I took notice of them, I did not touch them. This was due to my not being all that great an admirer of the western genre in my youth. For the most part, I preferred stories that had settings and locations that featured electricity, indoor plumbing, and automobiles. Predominant exceptions made were for Poe adaptations and films headlining the likes of Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolf Man, or the Mummy.

Another exception allows for a segue to The Haunted Mesa, because this particular L'Amour novel belongs to a sub-genre known as the Weird Western. If a western had Billy the Kid fighting Dracula, or Jesse James meeting Frankenstein's daughter, well I could and would watch, or read, that.

I remember being somewhat intrigued by The Haunted Mesa when it was first released, way back in 1987, just not enough to pick it up and give it a read. What 20 year-old me would have thought of The Haunted Mesa will forever be an unknown, but 57 year-old me finished the book thinking it an entertaining and somewhat confused misfire.

The 'Lost Treasures' edition I read features an afterword by Beau L'Amour, the late author's son, detailing the torturous journey The Haunted Mesa took from idea to completed novel.

That backstory explains how L'Amour struggled with plot points and metaphysical concepts. Which explains the almost comical number of times Mike Raglan, L'Amour's two-fisted myth-busting hero, has to yank his wandering mind from a quagmire of navel-gazing thoughts on the nature of reality and force his attention back to the task at hand: finding and rescuing a friend that appears to have fallen, or been abducted into, an alternate reality.

There is a lot of potential in The Haunted Mesa for an adventure that could rival, or invoke, the Pellucidar and Barsoom adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Figures and creatures of myth, such as the Poison Woman and Bigfoot, make fleeting appearances, but ultimately they have no impact or influence on the actual narrative. Outside of Raglan thinking something along the lines of, "Damn! They really are real!"

In his afterward Beau L'Amour argues an opinion that his father started work on The Haunted Mesa too soon. That if he had allowed his ideas to gestate just a tad bit little longer, the book might have turned out stronger than it did.

It's an opinion that is impossible for me to disagree with, as The Haunted Mesa read to me like an author trying to find and understand the story he was writing, rather than telling that story.