The New York Times bestselling Western from Robert B. ParkerEverett 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.
When Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch arrive in Appaloosa, they find a town suffering at the hands of a renegade rancher who's already left the city marshal and one of his deputies dead. Cole and Hitch are used to cleaning up after scavengers, but this one raises the stakes by playing not with the rules-but with emotion.
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“Like the Spenser books, it’s a study of Parker’s enduring themes: buddy relationships, the weight that honor and responsibility put on a man, the consequences of violence, the way good can shade into bad and vice versa…a melancholy and sometimes moving tale of a lost but fascinating era.”—
The Seattle Times“Dryly amusing…a conclusion that had to make Parker smile as much as his readers will.”—Los Angles Times
“[Parker] takes total command of the genre, telling a galloping tale…[a] classic western… magnificent. As always, the writing is bone clean. One of Parker’s finest.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“For…readers with a hankering for the Wild West, including a high-noon shootout and all the accoutrements.”—USA Today
“Beneath the trappings of this gunfighter novel, Parker really has something to say about the nature of men and women in the Old West. Highly recommended.”—Library Journal
“As always, [Parker] is a master…his plot gallops to a perfect, almost mythical ending. Like a great gunfighter, Parker makes it look easy.”—St. Petersburg Times
“If Spenser and Hawk had been around when the West was wild, they’d have talked like Cole and Hitch. Wonderful stuff: notch 51 for Parker.”—Kirkus Reviews
