This is the first book I read from this author and a western so I was pleasantly surprised by the book.

Robert B. Parker's Buckskin is about the fight between two shrewd local businessmen just when gold is discovered.

An outstanding and confident, compelling story with a surprise around every corner. Fascinating and one I highly recommend.

Not everyone is a western fan so the genre often gets a bad rap. I've read westerns by many writers and Robert Knott is on my watch list to make sure I get new titles as they are released.
These stories are not your typical "shoot em up" or "hang em high" sagas. Our heroes tend to let the bad guys shoot each other as long as no one else gets hurt. Then they will step in and clean house. The story line is clearly defined and the characters are divided into the bad guys and the not so bad guys. Buckskin is well worth reading.

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on May 7, 2019

More Cole/Hitch westerns have been written by Robert Knott than by Robert B. Parker, who originated the characters. Parker is long dead but his name still appears more prominently on the cover of Buckskin than Knott’s. Go figure. The full title of the novel is Robert B. Parker’s Buckskin, but it really isn’t Robert B. Parker’s. In any event, I don’t know that Parker would be happy to have his name attached to Buckskin.

A dispute between the McCormick brothers and the Baptiste Group over gold mining rights brings Marshal Virgil Cole and Deputy Marshal Everett Hitch to the hills outside of Appaloosa. The McCormicks bought land from Baptiste and discovered gold, leading to the suspicion that the McCormicks knew about the gold before they bought the land. Baptiste finds gold on his adjacent land and both sides are working claims when a hand hired by the McCormicks disappears. Cole investigates but he’s more interested in keeping the lid on a potential feud than in the fate of expendable workers.

Eventually someone with money dies and Cole and Hitch become involved in a murder mystery, a task for which they are not well suited. The story is heavy on dialog along the lines of “You don’t scare me none” and “I aim to make things right.” Some of the dialog, like “Do not make a move or I will drop you,” is stilted; most of it is just clichéd. Quite a bit of the dialog is unimportant drivel that stretches out the story without adding substance to it. None of it leaves the impression that Cole and Hitch have enough collective brainpower to light a candle, much less solve a murder.

A parallel story tells of a murderous young man who is on his way to Appaloosa to find his mother. Along the way he encounters a woman whose husband doesn’t mind her interest in sleeping with him. That story has a vaguely supernatural feel (the woman apparently sees things that other people don’t, including things that have not yet happened) and she gets the young man high on various mind-altering drugs so she can steer him on a journey that will serve her purposes. Since the subplot’s destination is not apparent from the beginning, it holds more interest than the main plot, which essentially has Cole and Hitch shooting bad guys until they shoot the right one.

Hitch and Cole might be the two most boring heroes in the history of westerns. One of them comments about something obvious and the other one invariably agrees. A book that consists largely of dull conversations isn’t what fans expect from westerns. The reveal of the murderer is less than surprising. While the story of the young killer in search of his mother and his manipulation by the woman who drugs him is more interesting, its ending is predictable. Neither story creates tension, a flaw that is deadly in a western.

NOT RECOMMENDED

Robert B. Parker’s BUCKSKIN
Robert Knott
Putnam Books
ISBN 978-0-7352-1827-7
Hardcover
Historical Western/Mystery

I spent a lot of my early years with westerns. There were western books, movies, television series, comics...I’m not sure what happened, but the genre has faded, though it hasn’t entirely gone away. What is still there remains very, very good. One of the best is Robert B. Parker’s Cole and Hitch series. Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch are two U.S. Marshals based out of the growing town of Appaloosa in the New Mexico territory during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The series has been very ably written by Robert Knott since Parker’s untimely demise and has flourished by leaps and bounds under his careful and studied hand. That said, it takes a quantum leap forward with the newly published BUCKSKIN, which is one of the best books published in any genre so far this year.

BUCKSKIN has a bit of everything. The story opens with an enigmatic but hair-raising vignette involving an escape from jail by a violent young outlaw who, it develops, is intent on making his way to Appaloosa on a mission to see his mother, who abandoned him in his infancy. In good and short order the narrative reins are, per usual, given to Everett Hitch. He and Cole are quite busy on two fronts in BUCKSKIN. One involves a bit of jostling between two companies who are disputing a gold mining claim. The miners from one company ---the McCormick Brothers --- have started disappearing and of course suspicion has fallen on the other company --- The Baptiste Group --- or, to be more accurate, the hired guns The Baptiste Group has hired to protect their own workers from the McCormicks. When one of the McCormick Brothers winds up murdered in front of his own home the business dispute truly becomes reals. As if that were not enough, the city’s Appaloosa Days festivities --- an event arranged by Cole’s love interest --- are rapidly approaching. Meanwhile, the young outlaw continues to approach the city with vengeance of his mind, picking up an extremely unusual traveling companion with similar motives. A number of passions --- greed, envy, and revenge --- slow come together and then collide over the course and beneath the surface of Appaloosa Days in BUCKSKIN, and the echo of each and all of the resolutions will no dobut be heard in future volumes of the series.

I said earlier that Appaloosa has a bit of everything. That is true. There is sex, violence, thrills, and mystery. Actually, there are a lot of mysteries. There are a few murder mysteries, and a couple of motive mysteries as well, not all of which are resolved (and which may never be) once the final sentence is read. As might be evident to longtime readers of the series, BUCKSKIN is a bit more plot-driven than the installments in the Cole and Hitch series which have gone before it.The threads that weave their way through BUCKSKIN, however, are interesting enough that no one should mind a bit. Even at that, Cole and Hitch stand large enough in the goings on that there is no danger of them disappearing in the mix. Pick up BUCKSKIN and discover why this is one of the best series in genre fiction. Recommended.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
© Copyright 2019, The Book Report, Inc. All rights reserved.

Enjoyable, quick read. Robert Knott does a nice job in keeping with the writing style of the late Robert Parker. Though westerns are not my go to genre, I've always enjoyed this particular series by Parker. It's Spenser and Hawk meet the wild west. This one did not disappoint.

Thank you #netgalley and #penguingroup #putnam for the eARC.