(2005)Parker's second western about 2 friends who team up as Appaloosa CO new marshall and deputy who are hired to protect the town from a local bully rancher. Pretty good tale.(PW)This is only Parker's second western, after the Wyatt Earp story Gunman's Rhapsody (or third if you count the Spenser PI quasi-western Potshot), but he takes command of the genre, telling an indelible story of two Old West lawmen. The chief one is Virgil Cole, new marshal of the mining/ranching town of Appaloosa (probably in Colorado); his deputy is Everett Hitch, and it's Hitch who tells the tale, playing Watson to Cole's Holmes. The novel's outline is classic western: Cole and Hitch take on the corrupt rancher, Randall Bragg, who ordered the killing of the previous marshal and his deputy. Bragg is arrested, tried and sentenced to be hung, but hired guns bust him out, leading to a long chase through Indian territory, a traditional high noon (albeit at 2:41 p.m.) shootout between Cole's men and Bragg's, a further escape and, at book's end, a final showdown. Along the way, Cole falls for a piano-playing beauty with a malevolent heart, whose manipulations lead to that final, fatal confrontation. With such familiar elements, Parker breaks no new ground. What he does, and to a magnificent degree, is to invest classic tropes with vigor, through depth of character revealed by a glance, a gesture or even silence. A consummate pro, Parker never tells, always shows, through writing that's bone clean and through a superb transferal of the moral issues of his acclaimed mysteries (e.g., the importance of honor) to the western. This is one of Parker's finest.

(AUDIO). A classic western story. Bad-ass sheriff and his trusty side-kick come into a lawless town to protect the citizens from the evil robber baron wanting to take over the town. The hero isn't necessarily a white-hat hero, he's not above shooting first and asking questions later. His life is complicated by his cowboy lifestyle and his new love for the beautiful local widow. Classic, pretty good short read. ( )

First edition signed as new

NOTE: This review applies to all four books written by Robert B. Parker.

I've read all of Parker's Spenser series featuring a private eye in Boston, but I'd never tackled his series of Westerns despite being a fan of the genre. I'm really glad I did! These are some of the best books I've read this year.

The series revolves around Virgil Cole, a legendary gunfighter, and his sidekick Everett Hitch, who narrates the books. In Appaloosa, Cole and Hitch end up in the town of the book's title and become the town marshals. What ensues is classic Western: a fight with a corrupt rancher, a doomed romance with a woman of questionable repute, and a final climactic showdown that sends the pair of lawmen on their separate paths, though with no animosity between them.

Resolution is the town that Hitch washes up in after he and Cole part, where he finds work as a saloon bouncer and ends up being the town's de facto marshal. Things get complicated quickly, and his old buddy Cole shows up just in time to help him get the best of the bad guys.

Brimstone is the next town on the duo's journey. They are back together and searching for Allie, the wayward woman who snared Cole in the first book, only to prove less than stalwart. They find Allie, and Cole sets out to learn whether he can forgive her trespasses. Meanwhile, he and Hitch try to head off trouble between a corrupt saloon owner and a fiery evangelist preacher.

Blue-Eyed Devil is the final book in the series, and finds the Cole/Hitch duo back in Appaloosa, the setting of the first book. Along for the ride are Allie and a young orphaned, traumatized teenager who will only talk to Cole. As if that wasn't enough trouble for one gunman, he and Hitch also have to contend with the new marshal in town and his 12-man posse and renegade Indians. ( )

Robert B. Parker is known for his detective novels - his interconnected Boston (and the region) based series have more of 50 books between them (and all 3 series had been continued after his death). But in his standalone novels he explored almost every genre (except for speculative fiction) - romance, crime, family sagas, westerns and sports were all covered. "Appaloosa" is not the first western that he wrote, fictionalized biographical novel of Wyatt Earp("Gunman's Rhapsody") had already proven than his style works for the genre. And this novel shows it even more - without the historical figures and the known story to support and be reinterpreted, Parker creates his own Wild West that is as alive as the real one.

Meet Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch - lawmen in the Wild West who travel around the country and take the law in their hands (legally) when things go especially bad. And in the town of Appaloosa they had - a local land owner had been terrorizing everyone (the novel opens with a horrific scene of violence) and anyone who has anything against it gets killed - including the old lawman. So the town calls our guys and they set to solving the problem - in their way.

The story is told by Everett Hitch - the helper to the much more ruthless Virgil Cole. Which does not mean that Hitch is in any way innocent or that he does not kill. But Cole likes his guns and knows how to use them - and even when no gun is around, he can be violent, regardless of the propriety of the situation.

And then someone finds a way to almost disable Virgil - because he falls in love. Then things go badly -- for everyone besides the woman anyway...

It is a gunslinger novel but it is not just that. Somewhere under the deceptively easy prose which is the usual Parker style is hiding a whole world. If anything it is even better used here than in the Spenser series - the Boston of Spenser is known to the world so you back-fill some of the missing information; here you cannot and you do not need to. And despite the spare style there are the nature pictures and the Appaloosa stud and his mares, there are the people of a town somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

I had been listening to the surviving episodes of the radio version of Gunsmoke (most of them made it through time actually) and the world of Parker is very close to the world of Gunsmoke - I was even looking for parallels between the two. They are not the same ones, neither this later one is modeled on it. But they have the same feeling and the same deceptive simplicity that is anything but.

I am planning to continue with this series at least with the novels that Parker managed to finish (only 4) but if the other 3 series are any indication, I will probably decide to continue even with the authors who took the series and continued it after his death. And I probably should read more westerns... ( )