Blue-Eyed Devil is the fourth, and I suppose the last, Robert B. Parker western about Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. The two gunmen have returned to the town of Appaloosa, where their fictional careers began. They were the law there then, but now the town has grown. There's a police chief with a 12-man force. Amos Callico, the chief, has a nice little protection racket going, and he's politically ambitious. Virgil and Hitch don't like him. All the plot elements are familiar. The powerful rancher with a wayward son. Renegade Apaches. A hired gunman. Parker mixes them all together with Callico in a meandering story that could have used some editing. There's a bit too much repetition even though the book is more the length of a novella than a novel. But who cares? Not me. I enjoy reading pages of Parker's patented dialogue, even if I've heard it all before. I'm really going to miss his three or four new books a year.
I love the cover of this one, by the way. Hitch and Cole riding off into the sunset. Very appropriate.
1 comment:
You're right about the cover being symbolic of the ending of the series. I admire Parker for writing westerns when he could have kept pumping out Spenser novels.
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