Jan 26 2009
Pete Griffin in Louis L’amour’s “Heller With A Gun”
Peter Griffin tries to kill King Mabry in the opening chapter of “Heller With A Gun.” Later on he is hired again to kill King Mabry. Pete is a careful man, but so is King Mabry.
In chapter four, L’amour makes an attempt to buy the reader’s sympathy by providing excuses for his continued degenerate behavior. In the end he does accept the job and agrees to attempt to murder a man in cold blood for money. But of all the characters in the book he is perhaps the most complex and interesting.
In the end I can’t decide if I hate him or not. I can hardly blame the man for attempting to find a way of living. His career was difficult, but was also bred of a need in the world that he lived in. Men needed killing in order to make way for the dangerous enterprises they started. Had he succeeded he would not be known in infamy, but would have merely been just another rough man of the west. In any even the complexity of his character makes him interesting and adds depth to L’amour’s story.
