Tom Lea is fast nosing out Zane Grey as king of the Cowboys. This latest mesquite and tumbleweed opus offers little to be criticized--maybe because it offers little, period.

The nicest thing about "The Wonderful Country," besides Lea's own illustrations, is that it's all plot and takes around four hours to read. If you can judge westerns by the usual criteria of literary excellence, then the book's worst flaw is that the reader frequently doesn't know who is killing whom, when, where, and why. Of course this might make little difference to the affilcionado, but I'm one and I like to know what is going on.

The good guy, Martin Brady, is a poor man's Oliver Wiswell, shunted around between Mexico and the U.S.A., never knowing quite where he's going to end up. But unlike Oliver, Martin has killed a man in fact several dozen, if we bother to count them all.

Martin believes "a man should go where he belongs." We are happy to say that be finally does go where he belongs--Taxes, of course. First he has to pull a few fast ones on his old patron, the governor of Chihuahua, and beat up come poor old Apaches who are "terrorizing" the countryside.

Don Passes Trick

As for incisive glimpses into the character of his characters, Mr. Lea just doesn't give us any. They're good when Martin's on their side, and bad when he's not. The author uses an old, but still good, Don Passes trick when in traducing his main figures. He pleasantly deserthes four unrelated groups of people and then weaves them together Los them runs out of tricks. As an afterthought (of any is warranted), the author evidently doesn't believe in transitions between scenes.

Obejectively there may be nothing wonderful about "The Wonderful Country"-but I suppose it can be very relaxing after a rash of hour exams. At least it's wild, wooly, and "authentic" tale of the Old West where men were men, if they lived long enough. . .