Resolution

This is the 2nd in a series by Robert Parker set in the Old West. I actually listened to the first--Appaloosa-- some months back on audiotape and was so taken with the quintessentially laconic dialog that I jumped at the chance to buy this off the sale table at B & N over Thanksgiving.  The books are wonderful to read, but also wonderful to hear read well, so take your choice. With Appaloosa, you can also watch the movie with Ed Harris and Viggo Mortenson if you want. Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch have been providing itinerant law man services for several years now, riding together and backing up one another when push comes to shove. Everett has made the ultimate sacrifice in Appaloosa ( a small town) to keep his friend Everett from having to break the law over his new lady friend's infidelity. Everett calls out the interloper, there is a gunfight that Everett wins, and he leaves town because he has broken the law and Virgil would feel honor bound to uphold it and take Everett in. Everett has moved on to the even tinier town of Resolution which has several saloons, but no mayor, town council or marshal. He signs on to be the peacekeeper in one of these saloons, run by a man named Wolfson, who not only has designs to take over the saloon across the street, but also the whole town and surrounding ranches, mines, lumber mill, etc. Just as things are starting to heat up, with competing hired guns brought in by the mine owner, Virgil surfaces with his own problems--he shot a man who left town with Vigil's lady friend Allie and then abandoned her in Texas. This provides the fodder for some thought-provoking conversations about the meaning of the law, justice, and friendship. Meanwhile. Cole and Hitch align themselves with two of the hired guns, Cato and Rose, when Wolfson decides they are not stepping smartly enough in response to his time line for taking over the town. All comes out as it should and Cole and Hitch head off to Texas to find Vigils's wayward woman. As with all Parker's books, the dialog establishes the characters and defines the relationships--which is true of life also if people only realized that.