Appaloosa

by Robert B. Parker

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0399152776
• ISBN13: 9780399152771
• Release Date: June 2005
• Publisher: Putnam Adult
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

BetterThan TV Westerns

Description of West & 'Ole time Westerners' is special.

Ready for Prime Time

Wow! This was my first introduction to Robert B. Parker. Verdict: Wonderful Writer! The characters are engaging and multifaceted. Parker does a great job weaving in complex relationships, and allows his characters (and readers) to struggle with tough emotional, moral, and social issues. It was also my first dip into the Western genre. Thanks to Parker, I'm hooked. Just bought Resolution and have a few other Westerns on my wishlist!

If you loved Lonesome Dove, you will love APPALOOSA

APPALOOSA's Marshall Virgil Cole & his deputy Everett Hitch are as great together as Gus McCrae & Woodrow Call Texas Rangers partners in LONESOME DOVE. I loved this book & have recommended it to everyone! Also helps that Robert B Parker is my FAV! I love his Spencer, Jesse Stone & Sunny Randall books too!

Channeling Louis L'Amour

Robert B. Parker has written almost 50 books now. The majority are the Spenser novels. Those novels started out fairly conventionally, but Parker evolved and soon, the series had several unique characteristics. For one thing, the author is very interested (perhaps even obsessed) with the dynamics of friendships between men, and even the relationship between those men who aren't friends, but respect each other anyway. For another, he's just about as interested in the way relationships between men and women work. So it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that his latest book, Appaloosa, has these themes as strong threads in what is a completely different genre for him--the Western. He did write one western, some time ago: Gunman's Rhapsody. The difference is that Rhapsody is a historical novel, a retelling of the OK Corral shootout. Appaloosa is, by contrast, a completely fictional story, with characters who are made up. The two main characters, Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch (Hitch narrates the story) are lawmen who move from town to town, cleaning things up until they get boring, then moving on to the next town. Virgil's deadly with a gun, and Hitch is the perfect second for him, someone who's not afraid to carry a ridiculously large shotgun, and use it if need be. When they come to their latest town, it turns out that the last sherriff, and one of his deputies, were shot dead by a local rancher. Cole and HItch spend the rest of the book resolving the situation, with interesting results for the characters and their relationships. I enjoyed this book a great deal. Hitch hints, in the opening of the book, that he may have more stories to tell. I certainly hope Parker feels the need to repeat them to us.

A great Western and one of Parker's all time best

This is simply great writing. You truely can see the tough guys in front of you, hear the gunsmoke and feel the wind and sand blow into your eyes and ears - woooow. It's like a movie. And it doesn't disappoint that movies like that have been made before. Nobody writes scenes like Robert B.Parker. Probably never will. The story is simple. Or so it seems at first sight. A town is being terrorized by a rich guy. The townfolks ask for help. In come Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. From then on the law is theirs. And nobody is going to change that. The rich guy tries his best, sends in his gunslingers. They end up dead. Cole and Hitch collect the rich guy. Want a judge to put an end to the crimes that are being commited. That's when things start to get complicated for Cole. First there's Allie, a girl who's got Cole wrapped around her fingers. But then a bunch of shooters from Cole's past also enter the scene as do some 15 Kiowas. You need to read the rest for yourself. A great story to be read in one sitting, as I said, like the best of the Western movies. It's all about loyalty, trust and friendship.

A Horse, A Town, Three Men and A Woman

THE HORSE - A gray leopard APPALOOOSA stallion, the leader of a herd that lived in the hills just beyond Randall Bragg's ranch, who symbolizes what Virgil Cole likes about about wild horses. "He's free. He's alive. He does what he wants. He goes where he wants. He's got what he wants. And all he got to do is fight for it." THE TOWN - Also APPALOOSA, a frontier mining town in the old West where the violent scene which opens this novel begins at The Boston House Saloon, the best in town. The die of fate is soon irreversibly cast as a result of the event which occurs at the Circle RB, Randall Bragg's ranch just outside the town limits. THREE MEN - Everett Hitch, the first person narrator, a West Point graduate (like his father) who decided after five years of soldiering in the Indian Wars that it "didn't allow too much expansion of the soul" and so turned in his commision and roamed the western territories doing whatever job was available to keep from starving to death. Hitch is one of the best men Virgil Cole has ever seen with an eight-guage shotgun. Virgil Cole was the Marshall in Trinidad when Hitch first met him outside the Rattlesnake Saloon fifteen years ago. The memory of that first time Hitch had seen Cole shoot had stayed clear despite the many gunfights that had followed. "Time slowed down for him. He fought with an odd stateliness. Always steady and never fast, but always faster than the man he was fighting." It was there he immediately learned one of Cole's many rules for maintaining order and staying alive - reload as soon as the shooting is over. That day in Trinidad, Hitch becomes Cole's deputy and they are still lawmen for hire fifteen years later when they enter Appaloosa and tell the Aldermen that Cole's and Hitch's rules have to be the law or they will simply ride on. Trouble erupts to force the Aldermen's hand and Cole and Hitch sign on and immediately and face down Randall Bragg, whose men have run roughshod over the town citizens. Before leaving Bragg declares "this town belongs to me. I was here first." By the end of these first few chapters, the reader fully expects that the conflict between the lawman Cole and the villain Bragg will comprise the central theme of this story. THE WOMAN - However, in the very next chapter, just when the elements of the traditional morality play about frontier justice all seem to be in place, Allison (Allie) French arrives in town. "A little travel-worn but still good-looking", she is a widow with only a dollar remaining after breakfast; Cole has Hitch arrange for her to stay at the Boston House and gain employment in the saloon by utilizing her limited skills as a very loud piano player. This a typical Robert Parker story, short concise chapters, spare dialogue, and a plot with enough interesting twists to keep the reader involved. As Parker's writing style has evolved, he seems to have gradually distilled his books to the essence of the characters and the story. My strong suggestion is t