Robert B. Parker's Buckskin

June 3, 2019
Knott’s sixth western featuring U.S. Marshal Virgil Cole and Deputy Marshal Everett Hitch (after 2017’s Revelation) successfully evokes the spirit of Parker’s originals. Virgil and Everett find themselves in harm’s way when a feud breaks out between two groups with conflicting claims about a gold discovery near the frontier city of Appaloosa. Half was found on land owned by the Baptiste Group, a consortium of businessmen, and half on land that the group sold a year before to two Irish ranchers, the McCormick brothers. Experiencing sellers’ remorse, Henri Baptiste hired gunmen to intimidate the McCormicks, who then retained their own. The fraught situation becomes more so after one of the McCormicks’ miners goes missing. Meanwhile, Knott foreshadows more violence in a subplot tracing the journey toward Appaloosa by an unnamed youth, introduced escaping from the cell where he was being held on murder charges by using a sharpened spoon to kill his jailer. Witty, laconic byplay between the leads, which effectively leavens the grimness of the series’ bloody backdrop, will remind many of Parker’s better-known Spenser books. Parker fans will hope for a lot more of the same from Knott. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM.