Resolution by Robert B. Parker

From the jacket: I had an eight-gauge shotgun that I’d taken with me when I left Wells Fargo. It didn’t take too long for things to develop. I sat in the tall lookout chair in the back of the saloon with the shotgun in my lap for two peaceful nights. On my third night it was different. I could almost smell trouble beginning to cook . . . .”

After the bloody confrontation in Appaloosa, Everett Hitch heads into the afternoon sun and ends up in Resolution, an Old West town so new the dust has yet to settle. It’s the kind of town that doesn’t have much in the way of commerce, except for a handful of saloons and some houses of ill repute. Hitch takes a job as lookout at Amos Wolfson’s Blackfoot Saloon and quickly establishes his position as protector of the ladies who work the backrooms—as well as a man unafraid to stand up to the enforcer sent down from the O’Malley copper mine.

Though Hitch makes short work of hired gun Koy Wickman, tensions continue to mount, so that even the self-assured Hitch is relieved by the arrival in town of his friend Virgil Cole. When greedy mine owner Eamon O’Malley threatens the loose coalition of local ranchers and starts buying up Resolution’s few businesses, Hitch and Cole find themselves in the middle of a makeshift war between O’Malley’s men and the ranchers. In a place where law and order don’t exist, Hitch and Cole must make their own, guided by their sense of duty, honor, and friendship.

Hardcover: 292 pages
Publisher: Putnam Adult (June 3, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 039915504X
ISBN-13: 978-0399155048

My thoughts: Got this sequel to Appaloosa yesterday from the library and finished it off this afternoon. This was another quick, entertaining read. I enjoyed the conversation between the two main characters as much in this one as in the first. It started basically where Appaloosa left off and continued the story line. As in the first book good and bad are in many shades of gray. Good people do not necessarily obey society's laws just because they are there. Good people keep their word and bad people don't. So as you might expect Hitch and Cole are again walking that line between the law and & just being gunmen.

There were many more characters in this story including farmers, miners, men from a lumber mill, native Americans, as well as the town people. Again the story is familiar, bad guy wants to take over the town as well as the outlying homesteads. Good guys stop him. The short lived romantic interest for Cole did not keep him from leaving at the end, with Hitch, to go to Texas to find Allie (Appaloosa.) I'm looking forward to the third in this series, Brimstone. It is not at the library yet so I'll have to wait. :(

I liked the cover picture a lot.

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western, hired guns, ranchers, old west