Review by Booklist Review
Since Robert B. Parker's death, various authors have tried to revive his Spenser and Jesse Stone mystery series with decidedly mixed results. Knott, who adapted the movie version of Parker's Appaloosa, does better with the author's western series starring maverick lawmen Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. The pair's latest assignment seems routine enough: escort some Mexican prisoners from Texas to the border. That part goes fine, but on the return trip, the train is hijacked by a band of desperadoes led by the notorious Bloody Bob Brandice, with whom Virgil has some history. Turns out the governor of Texas is on the train with his wife, daughters, and $500,000. Echoing Elmore Leonard's Hombre (1961), Knott throws Cole and Hitch into one of those existential situations typical of the best westerns. Trouble arrives out of nowhere, and it's up to the guys with the quickest wits and fastest guns to get out of it. Knott may not quite catch the staccato beat of Cole and Hitch's understated dialogue, but the plot careers along just fine, nicely augmented by the wealth of nineteenth-century railroad detail.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Parker wrote 68 mystery and western novels before he died in 2010; now screenwriter Knott continues Parker's popular Virgil Cole series of gritty westerns featuring Parker's two signature western characters: lawmen-for-hire Cole and Everett Hitch. Knott, however, cannot match Parker's sharp style and careful blend of action, suspense, and dialogue, producing instead a melodramatic hayburner with a high body count and low excitement. Following Parker's Blue-Eyed Devil, Virgil and Everett are now territorial U.S. marshals riding a train through the Indian Territories. When a white outlaw gang holds up a train, bullets fly, bodies drop, and female hostages are taken. The steely-eyed, cold-blooded marshals vow to save everyone and "rid this train of these thieves." After a drawn-out gun battle, the few surviving robbers escape with the hostages but not what they were really after. Virgil, Everett, a steady town constable, and a deadly Choctaw pursue the gang, leading to a predictable, sappy showdown in an abandoned mining camp. Knott sticks to Parker's portrayals of Virgil and Everett as hard-boiled, badge-toting gunmen whose simple solution to every problem is to shoot everybody in sight, but the result is a disappointing knockoff of a previously successful western series. Agent: Helen Brann, The Helen Brann Agency. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Not even their creator's death can slow down newly appointed Indian Territory marshal Virgil Cole and his friend and deputy Everett Hitch (Blue-Eyed Devil, 2010, etc.) as they board a train for a routine journey that turns out to be anything but. Virgil and Everett are returning from a trip down south to bring several Mexican prisoners to the Texas border so that they can be summarily executed back home. They don't expect their train to be held up by gunslingers, which are so numerous that the nine they kill barely make a dent in their numbers. What would attract the attention of such a large cadre of lawbreakers? Not just the presence of the governor of Texas and his wife and daughters, but the $500,000 in cash he plans to invest in a business venture, money the robbers have other plans for. Virgil is rarely at a loss, but he's surprised when he realizes that the gunmen include Bloody Bob Brandice, who's just escaped from prison after getting bested by Virgil years before. In addition to being bloody, Brandice is unexpectedly inventive, and the initial robbery turns out to be only the beginning of an increasingly baroque series of maneuvers and countermaneuvers played out first aboard a moving (and eventually a fragmented) train, then in the town of Half Moon Junction, whose leading mercantile establishment is Constable Burton Berkeley's church-turned-whorehouse, and finally, in the back country where only burros and iron men venture. Screenwriter Knott effortlessly handles the nonstop plot complications, doesn't bother to create actual characters and comes a cropper with the laconic dialogue he supplies for Virgil and Everett, who sound like parodies of the strong, silent types Parker created.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
