Resolution

By AM Tuesday, December 6, 2011

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What makes this book riveting reading, like Appaloosa before it, is the economy of language. While it is a dialogue driven novel each sentence spoken is stripped to the bare minimum yet conveys with razor sharp precision insight, intent, menace and meaning in abundance. It is dialogue as action. Each sentence is measured and distilled before being and delivered as if laser guided.

From the opening page Parker, through his characters, primes his readers for a journey through the lawless West. Human rights didn’t much matter there, business did. Everett Hitch states openly if a guy causes a problem ‘I’ll kill him.’ It was said so mundanely but lacked the banality that Hanna Arendt famously attributed to evil. Hitch wasn’t evil but he was ruthless all in the course of making a living. He slung his gun in defence of the townspeople but was paid by those with the money to pay, business men. They didn’t want trouble, it being bad for business. They didn’t particularly want ‘whores’ defended either, even though they made quite a bit out of the women and girls who worked the saloons and hotels.  So they deducted it from the wages of Everett if he protected them when they should have been working. He didn’t get too excited over it.

While the outcome is predictable enough the real element of tension in this work is whether the relationship that Hitch and Cole have established with two fellow gunhands will survive. It allows the suspense to hover throughout while the narrative meanders on its merry if murderous way.

Everett Hitch and Virgil Cole were not your ordinary gunslingers subject to the control of the local power broker. At one point Cole tells Hitch in response to a question about who runs the town, ‘we do.’ Wolfson might have thought he was the main man but he was always hostage to those who did his gun work.

Evertt’s rule of thumb was borrowed from his long time gun partner, Virgil Cole: ‘You gotta kill somebody do it quick. Don’t look like you got pushed into it. Look like you couldn’t wait to do it.’ They were efficient rather than malevolent. Others were baleful and failed to show the sense of detachment of Hitch when sending the targets of their ‘gun work’ packing from their mortal coil.

Death comes quick to central characters with a minimum of fuss. Parker does it without thrills or trims and while it sits with the pace of the writing there is a sense of unfulfilled expectation.

While they parted to go their separate ways in Appaloosa, Resolution draws Hitch and Cole together again. The loyalty between the two continues to exist as much as ever, although we see the subtle shift of power. Cole is no longer the dominant partner but the transfer is handled with such ease the reader doesn’t even see the joints.

As they fade into the setting sun, there is the sure knowledge that with the coming of dawn, Hitch and Cole will ride again.

Robert B. Parker, 2009, Resolution. Berkerly: New York. ISBN 978-0425-22799-2.