Robert B. Parker: Appaloosa (UK 2010)

From the Publisher:
New Mexico Territory, 1882: two itinerant lawmen walk their horses down the long, shale-scattered slope into the frontier town of Appaloosa. Below them, lies rancher Randall Braggs' new fiefdom. Ever since he gunned down Appaloosa's marshal, Braggs and his men have owned the town, stealing, beating, murdering with impunity - living off it like coyotes feeding off a dead buffalo carcass. Summoned by Appaloosa's oppressed aldermen, Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch are here to restore the rule of law. They've done it before, they know what to do only too well: shoot quick, shoot clean, reload. But they aren't the only new arrivals in town. The enigmatic Mrs Allison French has stepped off the train with only a dollar to her name, a keen sense of survival and a good eye for a strong man. Finding one isn't going to a problem - Appaloosa is full of them: Cole, Bragg, Hitch. The problem is that Allie French isn't afraid to hedge her bets - and that Virgil Cole's heart isn't as steady as his gun hand. Appaloosa is an intelligent, emotionally profound novel, told in bone-clean prose wryly leavened with whip-sharp dialogue. It's deeply satisfying on four levels: one, it's a well-told historical adventure and a modern re-interpretation of a classic theme; two, it's an ode to unassailable friendship; three, it's a subtle love story between two profoundly flawed people; and four, the way Parker writes, you'd swear the pages turn themselves.

Robert B. Parker: Appaloosa. Quercus, ISBN: 9781848873452 (August, 2010), 304 p., £7.99.

Robert B. Parker: Appaloosa (USA 2010)

From the Publisher:
The New York Times bestselling Western from Robert B. Parker
Everett Hitch and Virgil Cole are lawmen and friends who share the brutal hardships of an emerging West. But the courage that has defined them is challenged by a man without conscience or remorse. Now, Hitch and Cole have followed him to the small town of Appaloosa.

What follows is a dance of wills where villains are cast in shades of grey, where heroes hide in the blackest shadows, where women can betray with frightening ease, and where Hitch and Cole will discover the price of responsibility, honor, and loyalty in the Old West.

Robert B. Parker: Appaloosa. A Novel. Berkley Books, ISBN: 9780425233658 (January, 2010), 304 p., $14.00.

Robert B. Parker: Appaloosa (USA 2006)

From the Publisher:
In one of Parker's finest, two gunmen arrive in the lawless town of Appaloosa where the actions of a renegade rancher have already taken their toll.

Robert B. Parker: Appaloosa. A Novel. Berkley Books, ISBN: 0425204324 (June, 2006), 276 p., $7.99.

Robert B. Parker: Appaloosa (USA 2005)

From the Publisher:
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 novel Double Play, Parker's imagination has taken readers from Boston to Brooklyn and back again. In Appaloosa, 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.

Robert B. Parker: Appaloosa. A Novel. Putnam's, ISBN: 0399152776 (June, 2005), 276 p., $24.95.