Title: “Bullion” Bob: A Trilogy
Author: Robert M. de la Torre
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781453798799
Pages: 55, Paperback
Genre: Fiction/Western
Reviewed by: Gary Sorkin, Pacific Book Review
Book Review
Having read prior works by Robert M. de la Torre, I already had my expectations set high for some enjoyable short stories. To no surprise “Bullion” Bob: A Trilogy brightened up my morning because of the very colorful characters, Bob, along with his cohort Trappy, and his donkey Limelight, personified at times always loyal and stout.Set in the Mohave Desert, the first story titled “Bullion” Bob began with a very dry Bob; a man scratching his way in the desert sand, at the point of near death when his life is saved by Trappy finding him and bringing a canteen of water. Trappy, known by the Indians for his good trading pelts, has a way with the Indians, knowing their customs and language. All this blends into a mix of moments where these “gruff and salty guys” shuffle through life in search of striking it rich, encountering colorful characters and quite extraordinary situations of an “Old West Cowboy” calamity of events.
“Bullion” Bob is not the type of book riding the coattails of a Louis L’Amour western, but rather keeps to a pace analogous to a Western TV series. Robert M. de la Torre has a very light, brisk and at times discombobulated story telling technique. I’d say he has the style one would expect when sitting around a campfire, eating cowboy beans and passing the whiskey, watching the embers of the fire float into the sky becoming hidden by the stars, as he tells his stories embellished by the impact of the harsh environment.
The first thing that caught my attention was the original cover art by Jeffery Johnson showing a cowboy propped up against a cactus (a rather uncomfortable back rest, if you ask me) along with a broken wagon wheel, a coyote and a dried up skeleton indicating death by dehydration. This picture is a marvelous cover design for what the galley text conveys. Like the early black and white Saturday morning TV shows of the late 1950’s and 60’s, the story has the basic characters of the quintessential sheriff, bad guys, western women, thieves and scoundrels. Events move quickly as our hero, Bob, becomes the “pin-ball” within a western world flipping him up to the action while gravity is bringing him down to reality, bouncing him against the bumpers of others interacting with him and falling into extra points of enjoyment with lights flashing within the reader’s mind of humorous imagination. “Bullion” Bob is seriously good clean fun for a Saturday morning light reading pleasure, or any time for that matter.
This book is simply great fun – like a comic without the pictures, something good to give a youngster going on a trip or as something to put next to his Toy Story “Woody” cowboy doll, as it reads as a good bedtime story, over and over again, a pleasure for kids of all ages.
