Off the Mangrove Coast

Bantam has published 117 of L'Amour's books, with this collection being the second posthumous story collection (the first was Beyond the Great Snow Mountains) in a projected series of four. Duke LaMoore, as he was sometimes called, is probably best known for his westerns, but the versatile author was also beloved for his successful historical and contemporary fiction. These nine stories, originally published in magazines of the 1940s and '50s, feature typical and endearing L'Amour heroes--detectives, prize-fighters, Far East adventurers, cowboys, sailors and some hardboiled women. Only one story is a western. The others are more contemporary and take place all over the world, from Los Angeles and Paris to the jungles of Borneo. L'Amour's short stories are characterized by his legendary vibrancy, an element of mystery or suspense and recurring themes of revenge, greed, loyalty, jealousy or honor. In ""Secret of Silver Springs,"" three outlaws unexpectedly face a tricky and deadly moral dilemma. ""Time of Terror"" is a clever mystery about a dead man who is not really dead, and a hapless victim whose quick wits prove that the reader should ""beware of an honest man."" The title tale depicts four desperate men searching for sunken treasure off the coast of Borneo, only to find greed and murder as their reward. Best, however, is ""The Unexpected Corpse,"" a tightly woven whodunit with a ""private shamus"" and a delicious actress in over their heads in a puzzling murder investigation. Crisply written and fast-paced, these stories will have the author's fans clamoring for more, the sooner the better. (May)