Parker's Resolution

In 2005, Robert B. Parker took a little detour to the Old West in Appaloosa, his first Western with his own characters and story. He'd moseyed through the era with 2001's Gunman's Rhapsody, a retelling of the Wyatt Earp/OK Corral shootout, but this time brought two characters -- lawmen Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch -- out of his own head.

Appaloosa probably seemed like a lark for Parker. His mainstay, the wise-cracking private eye Spenser, recycled his own life history about once a decade (three times, the man's had the same almost break-up with his ladylove, Susan Silverman). His newer series, one featuring Paradise police chief Jesse Stone and the other Boston female P.I. Sunny Randall, started out fresh but had found themselves in the same rut. Jesse's stuck with his unfaithful ex-wife Jenn and Sunny with her ex-husband Richie, and neither one of them can make their relationships work or end them. Even a Jesse/Sunny liasion fizzled, and Parker's most recent Stone novel, Stranger in Paradise, wore its Spenser retreads and inheritance from the Paradise series' goofiest entry (1998's Trouble in Paradise) like dual millstones.

But then Parker moved to one of publishing's most-worn sets: the dusty trails, smoky saloons and blazing high noons of the Western. And Appaloosa crackled with the tension, life and freshness that used to give the top-flight wit of his dialogue and characterizations stories worth their cleverness.

In Resolution, Parker returns to the West and sends us on another ride with Hitch and Cole. Their opening reunion clunks a bit; he may never have intended a sequel to the first book and didn't leave a smooth way to pair them again. But once past that bumpy stretch, Resolution surges forward and sends the two on a trail that doesn't stop for breath or offer a hint of its final destination until just before the end.

Although it really hasn't been that long, it seems like a whole shelf of Parker novels has settled into libraries and dens across the country since he told a story with this much energy. I'm a Parker nut -- I could read that dialogue all day and I'm pretty sure that even when he phones it in he beats out any five major bestsellers in his genre on any given week. But it's a whole lot more fun to get one of those calls when he's got an interesting story to tell. Let Spenser retire to that bouncer job in a retirement home he once predicted for himself and let Jesse and Sunny make the fanboys' day by getting together and making Paradise, Massachusetts safe for miniature bull terriers. I'm all for Bob setting his time machine to the late 19th century and staying there.