Blackjack

May 30, 2016
Chosen by Robert B. Parker’s estate to carry on the author’s work featuring Appaloosa’s police team of Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch, Knott creates new plots for Parker’s people and places in his own series. Those who love Wild West outlaw/lawmen books can run right through the pages of Blackjack to the surprise ending. For listeners, however, it’s a slower, more irksome story. Reader Linn voices all the characters in the same low voice with a slight Southwestern twang. But it doesn’t matter—the listener always knows who’s speaking because every line of dialogue is followed by “I said,” “Aly said,” “he said,” “Virgil said,” etc. As these folks generally converse in very short sentences, the repetition in this dialogue-heavy plot might drive listeners insane. A Putnam hardcover.

December 1, 2015
Knott (Robert B. Parker's The Bridge, 2014, etc.) continues the inimitable Parker's Western series with marshals Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch caught up in the aftermath of a Denver policeman's wife's murder. Sgt. Roger Messenger has traced his wife's alleged killer, Boston Bill Black, down to Appaloosa territory, where Cole and Hitch keep the law. Messenger confronts Boston Bill, who's busy setting up a new gambling hall, and is killed by one of Bill's henchmen. Bill and two bodyguards flee. Cole and Hitch pursue, but in the chase, popular deputy sheriff Skinny Jack is killed. The marshals bring in the bodyguard who killed Messenger, with the other shot dead. But it's bounty hunter Valentine Pell who brings Boston Bill back to Appaloosa for trial. Hitch is astounded to learn that Pell is Cole's long-lost, and disreputable, half brother. More complications soon occur for Cole and Hitch. Westerns need atmosphere as much as story, and Knott has a knack for six-gun verisimilitude, sketching the land and summer heat, the horses and the shopkeepers. Knott's especially good with the prototypical Old West marshal, Virgil Cole, "perfectly present in the here and now," every inch stoic lawman: " 'Tangled goddam web,' I said. 'Is,' Virgil said." Other conversational exchanges, however, occasionally include idioms and phrasing seemingly too modern. Knott's a descriptive writer--he sees a lawyer as "a tall narrow man with thick tangled eyebrows"--and his tale gallops along without confusing readers new to the series. The undercurrent of the unspoken mutual attraction between Hitch and Virgil's common-law wife, Allie, continues to heat up the narrative, but this time Hitch takes comfort in the arms of the mysterious Daphne Angel, the gambling hall's bookkeeper. A tad off the bull's-eye hit by Larry McMurtry's Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae adventures but a darn good way to pass an afternoon for Western fans.

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January 1, 2016
Virgil Cole is still the marshal in Appaloosa, and Everett Hitch is still his deputy, but the town is growing, and with growth comes trouble. Like Boston Bill Black, who is wanted for the murder of a Denver policeman's wife. The aggrieved husband, Roger Messenger, steps off a train intending to arrest Boston Bill, but Messenger is shot first. Bill and cronies decamp, but Virgil and Everett are on their trail. A shootout ensues, but Bill escapes. Complicating matters are, first, the arrival in Appaloosa of a contingent of angry lawmen and, second, the fact that Bill claims to be innocent, and what facts there are may support his position. Knott, who has improved considerably in his role as the caretaker of the late Parker's western series, adds a new wrinkle here with a damn fine mystery running parallel to the western story. There's a solid conclusion and even a new character who could become a series fixture. Fine reading for western fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

September 15, 2015

Here's the eighth Virgil Cole-Everett Hitch Western, with actor/screenwriter Knott (who has home-on-the-range roots) having picked up the series after Robert B. Parker's death with three New York Times best sellers. Now, territorial marshals Cole and Hitch contend with a new troublemaker in the town of Appaloosa: Easterner Boston Bill Black, owner of Appaloosa's freshly wrought casino.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.