kelseybarnowsky

This is a western in the sense that it's set in the old west of the 1800's, and like all westerns I have read, it has a very simple plot: greedy rancher and his men terrorizes town people; town officials hire marshal to bring law and order to the town; marshal outwits, kills or jails anybody who disrupts the peace. Good guy defeat bad guys; good triumphs over evil, end of story. Everett Hitch, a former military man leaves the army and drifts from town to town, taking whatever job pays. In one of the town he is passing through, he decides to help out the marshal pacify a group of troublemakers. The marshal is Virgil Cole, a gunman who has decided that he prefers working with some semblance of legality to back him up. Robert B. Parker has created a partnership between two morally ambiguous man, that has so far has been the basis of three books, all named after the town: Appaloosa, (made into a movie), Resolution and Brimstone. The book opens with the murder of a town man and rape of his wife, and continues to the shooting of the marshal and his deputy when he tried to arrest the perpetrators. Cole and Hitch were hired to replace the dead marshal. Since there are no written municipal regulations, Cole makes a list of his own and has the acting mayor sign them. Thus he becomes the legal lawman. Other characters are Randall Bragg, a rancher who built his ranch before Appaloosa was established as a town; Allie French, who arrived in town almost penniless, looking for work and saying she is a widow (Hitch helps her get a job in the saloon playing the piano and looking pretty); Katie Goode, "a quarter Kiowa, a quarter Mex and half some sort of travelin' Yankee", she seems to be the only honest character in the book, admitting to being for rent by the hour or the night; as usual the town officials are portrayed as being weak and easily scared off at the first sign of violence and blood shed. Virgil Cole falls for Allie, but by the end of the book, he is under no illusion anymore that she will go with the top guy, whoever he is. The only redeeming factor in the book seems to be the friendship between Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. I'll take a look at Brimstone before deciding whether to follow this series or give it up.

2022-10-11 19:14