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When Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch arrive in Appaloosa, they find a small, dusty town suffering at the hands of renegade rancher Randall Bragg, a man who has so little regard for the law that he has taken supplies, horses, and women for his own and left the city marshal and one is his deputies for dead. Cole and Hitch, itinerant lawmen, are used to cleaning up after opportunistic thieves, but in Bragg they find a unusually wily adversary–one who raises the stakes by playing not with the rules, but with emotions.
This is Robert B. Parker at his storytelling best.
"The theme of hard, violent men in conflict over love and their own codes of honor is standard Parker fare, but no one does it better." – Booklist
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Release date
June 27, 2006 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780739346327
- File size: 141538 KB
- Duration: 04:54:52
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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The town of Appaloosa is in a world of hurt as Randall Bragg and his brutal ranch hands rule. Lawmen Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch aim to take back the town. Parker's talent for amplifying meaning from just a few words shines here. Cole and Hitch are complex characters--hard, violent men who live by a strict code of honor. Despite the sparse dialogue, patient listeners will fully grasp the depth of respect and trust these men share. Reader Titus Welliver is the perfect voice: deep, resonant, sometimes as gritty as a sandstorm. With a cadence that matches the nineteenth-century pace of life, his storytelling is just right for this first-person narrative. Listen carefully. Don't miss a word. T.J.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine -
Starred review from March 28, 2005
A starred review indicates a book of outstanding quality. A review with a blue-tinted title indicates a book of unusual commercial interest that hasn't received a starred review.
APPALOOSA
Robert B. Parker
. Putnam
, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 0-399-15277-6
It's been years since Parker has won a major literary award for a novel (he did collect a Grand Master trophy from MWA in 2002), but that may change with this stunning western, a serious contender for a Spur. 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. Agent, Helen Brann.
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