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Blue-Eyed Devil

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About this listen

 Law enforcement in Appaloosa had once been Virgil Cole and me. Now there was a chief of police and twelve policemen. Our third day back in town, the chief invited us to the office for a talk.

The new chief is Amos Callico, a tall, fat man in a derby hat, wearing a star on his vest and a big pearl-handled Colt inside his coat. An ambitious man with his eye on the governorship—and perhaps the presidency—he wants Cole and Hitch on his side. But they can’t be bought, which upsets him mightily.

When Callico begins shaking down local merchants for protection money, those who don’t want to play along seek the help of Cole and Hitch. When Cole is forced to fire on the trigger-happy son of politically connected landowner General Horatio Laird, Callico sees his dream begin to crumble. The guns for hire are thorns in the side of the power-hungry chief, and he’ll use any excuse to take them out. There will be a showdown—but who’ll be left standing? Action & Adventure Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction
All stars
Most relevant
A moral tale despite all the bodies. Human and responsible writer. Likeable characters, even the flawed ones.

great story and themes

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This is the final act in the story of Virgil Cole and his sidekick Everett Hitch, the itinerant gunslingers who are hard but fair - freelance lawmen who seek to bring order to the unruly Wild West. This is the first of the four books in the series I’ve listened to on Audible. I normally read them on ebook. Titus Welliver (who plays Bosch in the Amazon television adaptation of the detective novels by Michael Connelly) narrates - and his deep, gravelly tones work well. Hitch is our Dr Watson, in effect, telling us about his great pal, a legendary gunman and town-tamer - and an autodidact with a good line in malapropisms. Hitch relates the action, which means there are a lot of sentences featuring the word ‘said’. That’s hardly unusual in any novel. But it crops up in almost every sentence here, or that’s how it feels - these novels are relatively short, but very dialogue-heavy. That matters less if you’re reading a hard copy - and a lot more if you’re listening on Audible. But it becomes less of an issue as the novel progresses and momentum builds. As for the plot, it fits the formula set by the last three; by now, it’s probably starting to outstay its welcome, so maybe it’s just as well that this is the finale. That said, it’s deftly done as always by master craftsman Parker. His heroes are back where it all began, in Appaloosa. There are powerful men - with malign motives. And there’s tension with Native Americans, which inevitably boils over. This element - their war with the ‘blue-eyed devils’ of the title - is important, and gives the novel a much-needed extra layer. The swan song of Cole and Hitch is a fitting coda to their eventful careers.

Farewell to the town-tamers

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