Putnam; 336 pages; $27; Amazon |
The western genre in books and movies have become almost extinct in recent years. Department stores, like Walmart, carry very few western titles, which are mostly written by bigger profile authors.
I fell in love with the genre while I was in my early twenties after reading a Matt Braun novel. (I don't recall the title.) Since then, I occasionally read a western or two, and no I'm not referring to romance westerns.
Now available from Putnam is the ninth novel in the Cole/Hitch western series, titled Revelation. The series began with 2005's Appaloosa written by the late author Robert B. Parker. The book was adapted into a feature film of the same name in 2008. Three sequel novels soon followed. After Mr. Parker's death, Robert Knott, who co-wrote the Appaloosa film script, took over writing additional sequels in the series.
Revelation marks the ninth book in the series and the fifth written by Robert Knott. Once again, the series focuses on the territorial marshals Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch, who are living in Appaloosa, New Mexico. After Augustus Noble Driggs and a few other convicts escape a stateside penitentiary just across the border from Mexico, Cole and Hitch lead a manhunt to find them. Of course such a mission sounds easy at first for the duo, but they quickly realize that there are more dangers in play here after one of the convicts kidnaps a woman.
As for Driggs, he's on his own mission to retrieve a stolen cache of gold and jewels and to get revenge on the men who betrayed him, but he'll have to outrun and outsmart the ruthless lawmen who are hot on his trail.