After the final scenes of Robert B. Parker’s novel Appaloosa, fans knew the story of Everett Hitch and Virgil Cole couldn’t end there. Especially not with a movie starring Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen waiting in the wings.

Resolution takes up only a short time after the previous novel. Everett Hitch is still riding solo at this point and takes a job at the Blackfoot saloon as a security guy. I enjoy the relationship between Everett and Virgil, because that relationship is the bones of what Parker has stated will be a three-book series. I knew I wouldn’t have to wait long for the action to begin, or for Everett and Virgil to get back together.

Parker delineates his two principle characters very well. Virgil Cole is an unfinished man in a way. He knows what he has been but he doesn’t yet know what he will become. Everett Hitch, on the other hand, has no qualms about addressing what he is. His moral convictions are centered and steady, and he never questions his actions or his motivations for doing them.

The town of Resolution remains somewhat undefined and isn’t seated in the historical Old West. Parker seems content to just lay the town in where he wants to and sketch in the background and surroundings the way he did in Appaloosa. Given the story that he wants to tell is skeletal and action-packed, readers don’t need much of a history or true-to-life geographical setting the way Louis L’Amour and Elmer Kelton do them.

In no time at all, Everett finds himself neck-deep in trouble. As security man for the Blackfoot Saloon, he works for Amos Wolfson. Wolfson is intent on buying up as much of the town and surrounding land as he can, and he’s made enemies of the local ranchers and Eamon O’Malley, Resolution’s other financial baron who is also making moves at a major land grab.