Customer Reviews

Blue-Eyed Devil

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Virgil Cole and Everett Hatch return to Appalossa where they had enforced the law in the past.

Currently, the town is run by Amos Callico, an ambitious, corrurpt, chief of police, and his twelve lawmen.

Callico is always looking for personal gain and his manner of providing justice is to demand kick backs from the businessmen and local residents.

Virgil and Everett are hired to provide personal security by Lamar Spec, at his saloon, The Boston House. When they do, Callico approaches them and complains that they are taking money that belongs to him. When that doesn't work, he asks if they would join him. He's rebuffed and soon, the two men are providing an honest brand of security for all of the saloons in town.

One day, their friend Pony Flores and his half brother, Kha-to-nay arrive. Pony tells them that his half brother has just killed a corrupt Indian Agent and robbed a bank. The government is after him for the first offense and the Pinkertons for the other.

Parker is a master story teller. As I breezed through the pages I kept thinking of Gary Cooper in "High Noon" and was humming the theme song from the movie.

Parker's visual descriptions and entertaining characters make the reader want the story to go on and on.

I really enjoyed the book and felt as if I was sitting at a ring-side seat as the realistic action was unfolding before me.

Robert Parker passed away recently and all of literature will be sorry that he's not still with us, providing entertaining stories and believable characters who we'd like to emulate.

A conversation between my ego and my id about this book:

Rubicon: "... you like this book"?

Jason: "I did".

Rubicon: "What about it you like"? A lone tumbleweed passes between us as we sit in front of a worn down, empty saloon.

Jason: "When Virgil kills a man he don't make a speech. Or brag. He don't say much. Gotta `spect a man for that."

Rubicon: "You don't say much. Why"?

Jason: "S'pose, don't have much to say".

Rubicon: "Think the world will miss Robert B. Parker"? Jason thinks about this for a long while. So long in fact that I almost forgot I asked the question.

Jason: "Reckon they better". I wait because years have honed me to his tone, his inflections. He wasn't yet done.

Jason: "Too many writers now-a-days. Too many people with free time and a pen. Too many damn words that don't tell anything". (Another pause as he looks across the dusty, empty street). "Parker could speak more in one sentence that most folks could write in an entire book".

I keep silent. That's the most I done heard Jason talk, at one time mind you, in the seventeen years that I've known him. Once he sighs I know I can continue.

He does.

I do.

Rubicon: "Think they'll be another like him"?

Jason: "Reckon not".

Rubicon: "Wanna' visit the hoar house"?

Jason: "Reckon so". He smiles. I grin.

No, this wasn't your ordinary review because Mr. Parker wasn't your ordinary writer. Parker wasn't just a guy with stories to tell. Stories that needed to be told, sought out Mr. Parker to tell them. And the magic of his storytelling was that he didn't need a lot of words to do it. His brevity of words carries the power of a sawed-off shotgun. Our boys, Hitch and Cole, are back; and they are still as deadly and lethargic as ever. They are an impossible blend of Billy the Kid, Buddha, and Niche. `Blue-Eyed Devil' is a brilliant continuation of `Appaloosa', `Resolution', and `Brimstone'. It was also nice to see a number of characters make cameos to help Hitch and Cole raise a little hell. OK, a LOT of hell.

This is a series where you definitely want to start with the first one because... well... Hitch and Cole are such powerful characters that you need to start off with the beer version before you start pulling shots of corn liquor. Sunset, saddle, and sage. Tipping my hat to you Mr. Parker...

Some of you may not understand the title but having been a Robert Parker fan all of his publishing days and seriously in love with strong, silent men like Virgil and Everett my heart aches for the passing of a master. This was a good bye novel and you should read the earlier Virgil and Everett novels to pick up the pace and taste of their laid back, calm acceptance of the violence of the world and the cure of it. These men function in a time and place where violence is the cause and cure of many problems. Reading this book was a trip back in time and bittersweet because I know there would be no more. There is no one writing of the caliber of Robert Parker.

Robert B. Parker was that rarest of writers: a commercially successful author unafraid of taking risks in his craft. The acknowledged "dean of mystery writers," he stepped away from that genre completely in 2005 to start a western series with the publication of APPALOOSA. Now, several months after his death, comes the release of the third book in that series, BLUE-EYED DEVIL.

Parker proves that, had he started a few decades earlier, he could have made Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch as popular as Spenser and Hawk. He also shows that he ranks up there with great western writers like Louis L'Amour and Larry McMurtry. And here we see again what made Parker such an outstanding writer: he makes readers want to spend time with his protagonists.

Parker's writing is so good, so exact, that he has you sitting on the porch in front of the Boston Saloon, eavesdropping on the conversations of Cole and Hitch and totally engaged in their situation. In BLUE-EYED DEVIL, they have returned to the small outpost town of Appaloosa after rescuing the love of Cole's life, Allie, from a brothel in the last installment of the series, BRIMSTONE. Cole and Hitch do itinerant "gun work" and once were the law in Appaloosa. But when they get back, they find that there is a new sheriff in town. Parker describes him on page one: "He was tall and very fat in a derby hat and dark suit, with a star on his vest, and a big black-handled Colt in a Huckleberry inside his coat. Standing silently around the room were four of his police officers, dressed in white shirts and dark pants, each with a Colt on his hip."

Amos Callico is more like Tony Soprano than your typical sheriff, shaking down the saloon owners for protection money. But then again, he has big ambitions. He wants to be President of the United States one day. And in BLUE-EYED DEVIL, he is going to find an opportunity to get there by fighting Indians. Unfortunately, much like that other great Indian fighter who wanted to become President, George Armstrong Custer, his military skills might be somewhat questionable.

Just to make things interesting, his rival for power in the town is General Horatio Laird, formerly of the Confederate States of America, and accused not only of retreating but also of committing war crimes against civilians. But the accusations seem to come from Callico's wife, who has a bit of an interesting past herself. When the saloon owners hire Cole and Hitch to be their own private security force, Callico becomes their enemy. When Cole throws the General's son out of a saloon after he starts abusing a whore, our protagonists find themselves with yet another powerful enemy. Callico says to them, "This is exactly why I don't want no vigilante law enforcing going on. There's a distinguished citizen being insulted by some whores and you side with the whores."

But that's the thing: Cole operates within his own code of right and wrong, which does not take into account what the powerful want. And this series, narrated in the first person by Cole's faithful sidekick, West Point-trained Everett Hitch, is really an exploration of the personal code of honor of the Old West. And, as with all Parker books, it has brilliant dialogue, outstanding in its simplicity.

Besides expertly working in multiple, entertaining subplots, such as Cole's difficult relationship with the untrustworthy Allie, Parker transcends the genre here by returning again and again to the moral dilemma faced by men like Cole and Hitch. In this regard, his work reminds me of the early westerns written by the great Elmore Leonard, such as THREE-TEN TO YUMA.

For despite the fact that they say they do "gun work," that is just a euphemism for what they really do. Cole and Hitch are killers, plain and simple. Hitch says over and over again how fast Cole is with a gun and how he is the best he ever saw. But Cole points out that you can't just kill people because you are faster than them. When he is the law, he has the protection of the badge. But without it, we see him wrestling here with his justification for killing and explaining in detail how he always gives somebody the option of backing down and walking away.

The unstated other side of the coin that Cole must wrestle with is the sure knowledge that someday somebody will come along who is just a little faster that day, or the day will come when Hitch is not around to have his back. But still he goes from fight to fight. According to his personal code, he must act no other way. General Laird brings another hired killer in to even the score with Cole. Again, Parker writes superb dialogue.

Add Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch to all the great characters that Robert B. Parker created over the decades to give us enjoyment and entertainment. In three books, we were just getting to know them. They will be missed. But BLUE-EYED DEVIL is a terrific western. It is the work of one of the greatest writers America ever produced, still working at the top of his game.

For most Robert B. Parker fans BLUE EYED DEVIL is a chance to (sadly) watch one of our favorite authors ride off into the proverbial sunset. If you've read his westerns then it's familiar ground with the exception that with his passing there won't be any more of the stories or his expansion into the genre. What I appreciate is that he has opened up the western genre to an audience that otherwise might have overlooked it. Thriller writer Elmore Leonard began with some remarkable western stories and novels; Hombre, Valdez is Coming, 3:10 to Yuma,and the Tonto Woman that are well crafted and, quite frankly, better than most thriller novels on the market today.
Parker's strong point was his dialogue and characters we like while forgiving their flaws because we know that they're working to make things right. The same, I think, can be said of Parker's westerns. We overlook the minor flaws in the plot for the same reason.
The three stars are for the familiar storyline but I'd have to give him five stars for his writing style that drew many of us in and kept us around waiting for the 'next' new book, whether it was a new Spenser, Jesse Stone or Sunny Randall story.
The westerns were a nice diversion from the everyday and it was easy to see that Parker was a big fan of westerns and quite probably wrote the books as his own diversion as well.
Judging from some of the wonderful reviews here and with his other books, he'll be missed by many, me included.

Blue-Eyed Devil is the late Robert B. Parker's most recent novel in the series following the exploits of Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. In this one our stoic heroes are back in Appaloosa, but as private citizens maintaining order in saloons rather than badge-wearing law enforcement officials. They continue to avoid trouble whenever possible but, as usual, end up in situations where they are forced to act. In Blue-Eyed Devil the town's sheriff is a politically ambitious man who is in cahoots with a rich rancher to completely take over Appaloosa and then move on to bigger and better things. The problems escalate until Virgil and Everett are forced to rely on their unmatched skills with guns to settle all of the issues.

I am a big fan of the late Mr. Parker, particularly with his Spenser novels. As any of his readers can tell you, the dialog is the key. In the Spenser books I always find the dialog to be intelligent and full of witty repartee. His Western books also rely heavily on dialog but in a different style. In the previous books, I enjoyed the conversations between Virgil and Everett. They could virtually finish each other's sentences. However, in Blue-Eyed Devil, the conversations were less appealing. I kept looking for more action, but not much really happened until late in the book.

The bottom line is that if you enjoy Mr. Parker's Western novels, you should also enjoy his latest effort. The style is the same. You may just not enjoy it quite as much.

Simply put, this is an excellent book. Virgil Cole and Everett hitch are not your typical western stereotype characters. They are deep thinking, quiet men who continuously fight the inner battle of whether killing is right or wrong, depending on the circumstances. Just because one is on the side of the law, they are not necessarily justified in killing, and Virgil and Everett realize this, as they find themselves on the opposite side of the law for this story.
I believe this book would be a great read even if you havent read the previous books leading up to this one, but it is nice to know the history these friends have shared up until this point. It is a fast moving, interesting story, which hooks you from the first pages.

This is another great western novel by the late Robert B, Parker and final chapter in the Virgil Cole/Everett Hitch Saga.

Really enjoyed this latest western by Parker. The characters are strong and authentic. The dialog is enjoyable and crisp. The story picks up where the last book ended. Only wish the seies could continue.

This another fine product from Mr. Parker. Virgil and Hitch come alive in his books and this one is as good as the first two. You can really get involved with the characters in these books. Reading them is a treat and listening to them is special.