Tackett

With this brisk first novel, Republican political operative Nofziger launches a projected trilogy of westerns revolving around cowboy Del Tackett. The eponymous hero is your typical pulp fiction knight errant: drifting through the West, perhaps righting a wrong or two, then ambling off into the sunset. Here he takes a job as foreman of the troubled R Bar R ranch, which is short-handed and besieged by rustlers. Esmeralda Rankin, who has run the spread since her father's death, catches the cowboy's eye (she likes him too), but the call of the trail is too strong, and he must move on after solving her problems. Louis L'Amour is Nofziger's literary hero and the book's dedicatee, so the similarity of Del Tackett to L'Amour's Tell Sackett is intentional, leading to much forced humor as Tackett is repeatedly mistaken for the more famous man. Near the novel's end, the Sacketts, thinking one of their own is in jeopardy, even show up to help, complete with a New Jersey cousin named--you guessed it--Hacken Sackett. Gratuitous sexual allusions (including lesbian rape) aside, this is competently plotted and written, though it never transcends the limitations of the genre, as does L'Amour at his best. (Oct.)