Resolution

By: Robert B. Parker

Narrated by: Titus Welliver

The New York Times—bestselling author’s richly imagined work of historical fiction: a powerful tale of the Old West from the acknowledged master of crime fiction.

I had an eight-gauge shotgun that I’d taken with me when I left Wells Fargo. It didn’t take too long for things to develop. I sat in the tall lookout chair in the back of the saloon with the shotgun in my lap for two peaceful nights. On my third night it was different. I could almost smell trouble beginning to cook.

After the bloody confrontation in Appaloosa, Everett Hitch heads into the afternoon sun and ends up in Resolution, an Old West town so new the dust has yet to settle. It’s the kind of town that doesn’t have much in the way of commerce, except for a handful of saloons and some houses of ill repute. Hitch takes a job as a lookout at Amos Wolfson’s Blackfoot Saloon and quickly establishes his position as protector of the ladies who work the back rooms–as well as a man unafraid to stand up to the enforcer sent down from the O’Malley copper mine.

Though Hitch makes short work of hired gun Koy Wickman, tensions continue to mount, so that even the self-assured Hitch is relieved by the arrival in town of his friend Virgil Cole. When greedy mine owner Eamon O’Malley threatens the loose coalition of local ranchers and starts buying up Resolution’s few businesses, Hitch and Cole find themselves in the middle of a makeshift war between O’Malley’s men and the ranchers. In a place where law and order don’t exist, Hitch and Cole must make their own, guided by their sense of duty, honor, and friendship.

Critic reviews

"The most memorable Western heroes since Larry McMurtry's...Lonesome Dove."
- ASSOCIATED PRESS

"A sparse, bullet-riddled rumination on law and order."
-PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"A pure pleasure to read."
-LIBRARY JOURNAL

"A reminder of just how much hardboiled fiction owes the Western."
-KIRKUS REVIEWS

Shoot outs and ins

Liked the conversations between and among characters and how the story takes on a descriptive life of its own.

Great book wrong narrator

Where does Resolution rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Great book the narrator is terrible everything is "he said", "she said" very monotone...should have used George Guidel instead

How did the narrator detract from the book?

Terrible monitor almost not able to listen

A solid story

I'm not sure how easily a reader of Parker's mystery stories would have identified him as the author of Appaloosa, given a blind test. This is is more recognizably Parker, but different in some good ways.

The early Spenser novels centered around nonstandard moral approaches to messy problems. Same here, but it's more explicit about why that's logical. Both Cole and Hitch have considered themselves bound to various frameworks, and it becomes evident that's a problem. Cole adhered to the law, and in Appaloosa the only way to find a resolution is for Hitch to break it. Hitch doesn't care about the law, but he does feel an obligation to do what he's hired to do.

So law, and a sense of honor, aren't sufficient. Out here, as Cole and Hitch know, there's nothing principled about who gets to make the law, or what the law is, or how it's enforced, and in this story Hitch's ethics about employment directly conflict with morality. They get past that because they're strongly defined as individuals.. But, as Cole worries, what does that leave? They just get to do what they do because they know how to use their guns. What gives them the right?

And it's a legitimate question. We've seen Cole beat up an innocent bystander because he was in that kind of mood. He been sticking with the law because he knew he needed the structure. He has to figure out who is is without it.

Here, at least, it comes down to individual decency, which Cole and Hitch do have, their loyalty to each other being one example. For Parker that's tied partly to masculinity, which he defines in a positive way. A guy beats his wife? That's not a real man. See Spenser for details, particularly Looking for Rachel Wallace.

That might make this sound drier and more programmatic than it actually is. It's a good story, more down to earth and uncensored than the Spenser novels, and I enjoyed it a lot. A story isn't just a string of incidents, and the character development and moral questioning are part of what gives this one meaning.

A minor quibble. At one point there are two opposing forces, one uphill, the other down, with a man going out to meet the downhill force. Somebody who's uphill determines that a bush on the hill is inside his rifle range, so he figures that the man will be safe if he reaches the bush. What's wrong with that picture?

I can't imagine anyone performing this better than Titus Welliver does here.

Great Performance

Great story but predictably. Titus Welliver brings the action to life, he is is a joy to listen to.

Exciting

Action start to finish. Fun to participate in Cole and Hitch's escapades. Well acted and a joy to listen in on their interaction.