Robert B. Parker's Bull River

January 6, 2014
Knott continues the adventures of Marshal Virgil Cole and Deputy Marshal Everett Hitch in this latest addition to Robert B. Parker's series (after Ironhorse). Virgil and Everett capture the killer and gang leader Captain Alejandro Miguel Vasquez and bring him to San Cristobal. But before they can close this case, they are already involved in another. The Comstock Bank, they learn, has been robbed by its president, and all is not as it seems as Virgil and Everett uncover the convoluted conspiracy behind the bank's robbery. Unfortunately, for a thriller set in America's old West, this novel lacks action. Each of the short chapters in the first two-thirds involves tedious amounts of interrogation of the many throwaway characters Virgil and Everett sift through in their attempt to uncover the true robber. Furthermore, the novel is puzzlingly written from Everett's perspective. Virgil is the more commanding hero in the story, and Everett's perspective is so rarely and ineffectually used it becomes a superfluous storytelling contrivance.

January 1, 2014
Knott (Robert B. Parker's Ironhorse, 2013) spins another tale that unites Parker's two chosen genres, the Western and the crime story. No sooner have Territorial Marshal Virgil Cole and his deputy, Everett Hitch, hunted down "Captain" Alejandro Vasquez so that he can be locked in the San Cristobal jail than there's a ruckus across town. According to unimpeachable eyewitness testimony, Henry Strode, president of the Comstock Bank, has made off with $200,000, most of it on deposit for Strode's father-in-law, St. Louis tycoon Jantz Wainwright. The search for Strode ends abruptly when he's discovered, beaten, breathing and broke, on the porch of Slingshot Clark's Cottonwood Springs whorehouse. It turns out that more than Wainwright's money has been taken; his daughter Catherine, Strode's wife, is gone as well. Clearly, there's more to this robbery than meets the eye, but Virgil and Everett are stunned to hear Alejandro Vasquez announce that he knows who the real robbers are and where they can be found. Can they trust the bandito accused of multiple thefts and murders to lead them to the culprits--especially once the trail leads to Mexico, where the federales are just as eager to clap Alejandro into prison as the Americans? And what will happen if, against all odds, Virgil and Everett actually catch up with their prey? The questions are a lot more interesting than the answers. But Knott pays out the complications with a sure hand en route to a denouement that provides fans exactly what they're looking for and not a smidgen more.

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December 15, 2013
This is Knott's second entry in the late Parker's western series, following Ironhorse, published earlier this year (Knott also wrote the screenplay for Appaloosa, the Ed Harris vehicle drawn from an earlier Parker western). Here lawmen Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch return for another adventure, mouthing their clipped dialogue that wobbles between droll asides and self-parody. They capture and bring in the dangerous Alejandro Vasquez, accused of two murders. But simultaneously, there's a bank robbery, with the bank president making off with the loot, though only because the real criminal holds his wife hostage. The two are brothers, and ultimately they lead Virgil and Everett into Mexico. But first comes Virgil and Everett's clever detective work and, of course, considerable shooting. The lawmen spring Alejandro, who provides mysterious insights concerning the brothers, and journey to Veracruz, where a showdown looms, though not before Virgil, Everett, and Alejandro gun down some Federales. Knott seems to enjoy himself in Mexico and portrays the country vigorously. His story is almost all dialogue, so it reads lightning fast, and it's certainly suspenseful.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)