The third novel in the continuation of the series (and 7th overall) finds Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch back in Appaloosa. They had just rebuilt the house Allie managed to burn to the ground in a cooking incident and are waiting for the weather to turn into winter - it is the second day of November and the hot weather is a bit surprising. The sheriff and his deputies are taking care of the town (which had grown considerably in the last couple of years) and our territorial marshal and his deputy are taking a break from the law.

Until a bridge is blown up at least - the biggest bridge in the area, just months before being finished explodes and falls down into the river. Meanwhile a traveling troupe shows up in town, the sheriff and two of his deputies go out of town on an errand and don't return and Everett falls in love again - this time with Séraphine, a futures teller who seems to really be able to see the future.

And just then the weather finally turns, stranding the troupe in town (without them even be able to set their tents in the foul weather) and Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch are off trying to figure out what happened with the bridge and where did the sheriff go.

On the plus side, Knott finally decided to stop trying to emulate Parker's style and instead started to develop his own - it pays homage to the original but without trying to sound like it (or not too often anyway - some of the dialog still seemed to try for it). It may not work completely but it sounds better and makes the story a lot more readable. He is nowhere near Atkins and I am not sure he will ever get there but the novel does not feel like a bad pastiche.

On the minus side is the story - the pacing is just wrong. I liked the final twist - it is a bit unusual for a western but who said that all westerns should be the same (even if technically the end is just a spin on an old tale everyone expected). But getting there was uneven - Séraphine being used as a deus-ex-machina to essentially kick start the proceeding and the butler's decision at the end of the novel felt like an author who had no idea how to tie the novel together. Séraphine was more of a narrative device through the novel and less of a character and unless Knott plans on bringing her back to town, it was just lazy writing (or unsuccessful anyway).

Overall I liked this one a bit more than the previous novel - it is nowhere near perfect (or objectively good) and if it was not about characters I like, I probably would have not continued with the series. But then the previous one was such a mess that the bar was very low. As it is, I plan to stick a bit longer and see where we are going.

PS: The novel can work as an entry into the series - short of a few repeated characters here and there (and none of them show up here), the series is more of a "The adventures of" type of a series than a proper sequential one -- Cole and Hitch never change and the only thing marking the order is how big Appaloosa is or what Allie had been up to (and what adventures they mention). The back story really does not come into play. While I prefer the modern type of series where the characters show some growth, I don't mind the old style ones occasionally. ( )

This book is the 3rd installment in the publisher's attempt to keep alive the Cole/ Hitch series of western novels, a series initiated by the late Robert B. Parker. I'm afraid I found it no better than Robert Knott's two previous contributions to the series.

I found The Bridge to be disjointed with a confusingly large cast of characters. (With over 50 characters, the reader may benefit from keeping a list). The dialogue is as tiresome as in previous works of the series -- often consisting of exchanges of short, laconic phrases between Cole and Hitch.

The plot centers on a massive new 300 ft. bridge that was built over the Rio Blanco Rover that has been blown up. A sheriff and his deputies who are sent to investigate disappear. It falls to Marshal Virgil Cole and his deputy Everett Hitch try to find out what's behind the situation. There's an unsavory band of supposed Union soldiers who make their way into town; a travelling theater troupe (which Cole's lady-love Allie has joined); and a mysterious fortune-teller named Seraphine (who seduces Hitch and who draws on her supposed psychic powers to advise him). With plenty of suspects for the bridge destruction, Hitch and Cole use their powers of detection as well as their skill with the revolver to bring justice to the territory.

The prose is clumsy, and owes too much to a late 20th century lexicon. (As an Amazon reviewer notes, what 19th century character would introduce someone as their “significant other”, or talk about "validating their existence" or reviewing their history on a "resume'"?). Further, the reader is left thinking that Seraphine may truly be able to tell the future – a supernatural element with little place in a western and a sop to the uncritical modern reader. As it turns out, the bridge destruction was part of a large insurance scam, likewise an unexpected turn for a "western." No matter-- by the end of the book, I didn’t care a great deal as to who did what. The fact that the story left several unresolved loose ends suggests that the author had lost interest as well. ( )

Having seen the movie Appaloosa, also by Robert Parker and featuring the same cast, I could see and hear the two heroes, Cole (Ed Harris) and Hitch (Viggo Mortensen), in my head as they set out to solve the mystery of who blew up the new railroad bridge and why. Reading this book was like having my own private screening of a new western!

I guess I've gotten use to Knott's version of Parker's Cole and Hitch series. The first couple irked me with his unneeded descriptive style. I guess by this third book in the series, I got over the fact that he can't write like Leonard (something that only Ace Atkins seems to be able to do) and accepted the book for what it was....a good story. ( )

This is a quick, easy read but not an altogether satisfying one. Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch are two of my favorite characters in the western genre but this work is mediocre at best. The plot is quite slow moving and by the time you reach the end you realize the reason for this; the author did not have much of a plot in mind. The story could have been told in half the pages.

The writing is informal and Knott obviously wants to portray Cole as taciturn almost to the point of being—but not quite—mute. The story is told from Hitch's perspective and he is the spokesman for the two. The conversation between Cole and Hitch frequently consists of one-word exchanges.

"Colorful lot," Virgil said.

"They are," I said.

Or another example;

Virgil didn't say anything else, either, not for awhile, anyway, …

Then he said, "Slaughterhouse."

I nodded.

"Beats hell," he said.

"Does," I said.

Furthermore, much of the dialog doesn't have the ring of authenticity. Instead of, "Yep," or "Yeah," one or the other is often depicted as saying, "Is," "I do," or some such.

The author includes a mystery woman—Séraphine—in the story as Hitch's love interest. See is depicted as astonishingly prescient, almost to the point that the reader begins to suspect that she is working with the outlaws. The outlaw gang is dispatched some 85 pages before the end of the book (large print edition) but the mastermind of the scheme has yet to be revealed. That allows the question of her involvement to remain unresolved. When it turns out that she wasn't involved the author then introduces the question of whether she was somehow a figment of Hitch's imagination. Of course that could not be because at one point she wrote a note that Hitch shared with Cole. Still, the possibility surfaces only to be rejected a few pages later. However, she disappeared without a trace, leaving in question how she appeared in the first place and her motivation.

Another unexplained event is the action of the butler, Jessup. He suddenly takes a dramatic and completely unexpected action while, up to this time, being about as important to the story as the wallpaper. His motivation is not explained. This seems like a cheat on the part of the author. It appears that Knott created a situation that he did not know how to resolve satisfactorily and took the lazy way out by resorting to a gimmick to end the story.

In short, I continue to like Cole and Hitch but hope the Parker estate finds someone else to take over as primary author of the novels. ( )