The Long Night of Winchell Dear
by Robert James Waller
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Book Summary Information
Author: Robert James WallerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-06-26
ISBN: 0307353087
Number of pages: 160
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Book Reviews of The Long Night of Winchell Dear
Book Review: I had to change my mind about Waller
Summary: 5 Stars
I had long ago written James Waller off as an author who wrote a story about a woman who cheated on her husband while he took his kids to the state fair. I never cracked that book, because frankly, the movie annoyed me to no end. Sorry if I'm not a romantic, but that just seems like a raw deal.
I picked up "Long Night..." at the library mostly because the cover had a cowboy boot in a stirrup on the front, and it had been a long, long time since I had read a western. I was initially disappointed when I found it wasn't, but quickly cast aside those disappointments as I was drawn into an interesting tale of the reminiscing of a gambler who is unaware of big trouble heading his way, but for the gnawing instinct that made him a poker legend in the first place.
"Long Night..." reaffirmed my belief that a great novel does not have to be believable, or even plausibly realistic, if it contains characters who are interesting; characters you wouldn't mind spending some time with. Throw in some poetic prose, and Waller has a real winner here!
Winchell Dear opened a door for me, and before I could shut it, "Texas" Jack Carmine barged in, followed (more politely) by Carlisle McMillan. Those two gentlemen (term loosely used in Carmine's case) were enjoyable enough that maybe, maybe, I'll give Robert Kincade a chance to prove his merit.
Summary of The Long Night of Winchell Dear
The steady tick of an aged Regulator wall clock and the squeak of an overhead fan turning slowly are soft but insistent, counting down the night, while the high desert thrums like a half-remembered Victrola song. The sounds are below the consciousness of Winchell Dear, an old-time gambler, a Texas poker player on the southern circuit, as he waits for something . . . something vague that his life of chance tells him is evil and moving his way. He has gassed and oiled the Cadillac and adjusts the pistol in his right boot, then plays one of the six fiddle tunes he knows, thinking back to his good days with Lucinda Miller. Alone, he waits in his remote ranch house, while, just outside, an acquaintance named Luther hunts, unblinking and of nervous temperament and moving through yellow primrose bending in the night wind.In Diablo Canyon, a distant part of Winchell Dear?s ranch, Peter Long Grass squats by a campfire, contemplating the profile he saw moving along the ridge of Guapa Mountain an hour ago, thinking about the gambler?s housekeeper, Sonia Dominguez, about the small, quiet world he has fashioned far from civilization and what undefined presence might now be threatening it. He gathers his tools and begins to run across the desert floor.
And boring toward all of them is a cream-colored Lincoln Continental with two men aboard. Traveling from Los Angeles on a mission they?ve been given, they are professionals, cool and implacable at the start, but becoming steadily more confused by the strange landscape they are passing through. Forty minutes from their task, they ready themselves, while a kitchen wall clock ticks its way through the long night of Winchell Dear.
The Long Night of Winchell Dear finds master storyteller Robert James Waller at his best as he takes us through the wind and dust of the high desert mountains, into the shadowy world of high-stakes poker fought in the back rooms of Amarillo and Little Rock, and headlong toward the book?s stunning finale of chaotic terror, where an unexpected hero emerges.
From the Hardcover edition.
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