Appaloosa

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Appaloosa

Title:

Appaloosa

Author:

Parker, Robert B., 1932-2010, author.

Series:

Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch series ;

Series Number:

Summary:

When itinerant lawmen Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch arrive in Appaloosa, they find the small, dusty town taken over by a renegade rancher who raises the stakes by playing not with the rules, but with emotions.

Physical Description:

276 p. ; 24 cm.

Genre:

Western fiction.

Subject Term:

Cole, Virgil (Fictitious character) -- Fiction.

Hitch, Everett (Fictitious character) -- Fiction.

Frontier and pioneer life -- Fiction.

Sheriffs -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Colorado -- Fiction.

West (U.S.) -- Fiction.

Publisher:

G.P. Putnam's Sons,

Electronic Access:

Contributor biographical information
Publisher description

Publication Date:

2005

ISBN:

9780399152771

Publication Information:

New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons, c2005.

Call Number:

PARKER

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607002396060	Adult Fiction	PARKER	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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Summary

A richly imagined novel of the Old West, as spare and vivid as a high plains sunset, from one of the world's most talented performers. It was a long time ago, now, and there were many gunfights to follow, but I remember as well as I remember anything the first time I saw Virgil Cole shoot. Time slowed down for him. Always steady, and never fast . . . When it comes to writing, Robert B. Parker knows no boundaries. From the iconic Spenser detective series and the novels featuring Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone, to the groundbreaking historical novelDouble Play, Parker's imagination has taken readers from Boston to Brooklyn and back again. InAppaloosa, fans are taken on another trip, to the untamed territories of the West during the 1800s. 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 of his deputies for dead. Cole and Hitch, itinerant lawmen, are used to cleaning up after opportunistic thieves, but in Bragg they find an 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.

Author Notes

Robert Brown Parker was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on September 17, 1932. He received a B.A. from Colby College in 1954, served in the U.S. Army in Korea, and then returned to receive a M. A. in English literature from Boston University in 1957. He received a Ph.D. in English literature from Boston University in 1971.

Before becoming a full-time writer in 1979, he taught at Lowell State College, Bridgewater State College and Northwestern University.

In 1971, Parker published The Godwuff Manuscript, as homage to Raymond Chandler. The character he created, Spencer, became his own detective and was featured in more than 30 novels. His Spencer character has been featured in six TV movies and the television series Spencer: For Hire that starred Robert Urich and ran from 1985 to 1988.

He is also the author of the Jesse Stone series, which has been made into a series of television movies for CBS, and the Sunny Randall series. His novel Appaloosa (2005) was made into a 2008 movie directed by and starring Ed Harris. He has received numerous awards for his work including an Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1977 for The Promised Land, Grand Master Edgar Award for his collective oeuvre in 2002, and the Gumshoe Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. He died of a heart attack on January 18, 2010 at the age of 77.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

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 total command of the genre, telling a galloping tale 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 story, 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 hanged, 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 dramatic 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 in play, Parker breaks no new ground. But that's irrelevant. What he does do, and to magnificent effect, is invest classic tropes with fresh vigor, revealing depth of character by a glance, a gesture or even silence. As always, the writing is bone clean. With Appaloosa Parker manages to translate his signature themes (honor among men) from the mean streets to the wild west in one of his finest books to date. Agent, Helen Brann. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Library Journal Review

Spenser's forebears? Itinerant lawmen Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch encounter a particularly nasty rancher in the town of Appaloosa. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.