[Hondo] remains a fine book unlike those which profligacy have recently made tediously repetitious. Hondo Lane is one of L'Amour's most engaging and interesting characters, rivaling in another genre Dashiell Hammett's creation of Ned Beaumont in The Glass Key in 1931 or Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe before Marlowe became sentimental. Hondo is self-reliant, capable without being excessively aggressive, sufficient unto himself without surrendering to greed…. Hondo is able to bridge the white and red cultures because he has lived five years among the Apaches and he possesses independence of perspective as well as of character…. L'Amour's conception of sexual relationships between men and women, such an important theme throughout his fiction, is a variation of [his belief] … that every man and every woman is a separate individual, best together when they are heading in the same direction. (p. 77)
Jon Tuska, "The Westerner Returns," in West Coast Review of Books (copyright 1978 by Rapport Publishing Co., Inc.), Vol. 4, No. 6, November, 1978, pp. 73-9.∗
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