During my vacation last week, I finished four books, all detective novels. No difficult or edifying reading.
Three of them were novels by Robert Parker, one from each of the series he has going right now. The first was “Sea Change,” the fifth book in the Jesse Stone series, the police chief in Paradise, Mass. Then I read “Blue Screen,” the fifth in the series about spunky private eye Sunny Randall. And then came “Bad Business,” the 30-somethingth Spencer novel. I’m actually behind on my Spencer reading; two other Spencer novels, written after “Bad Business,” also cohabit on my shelves.
The interesting thing is that Parker is cross-polinating (a very appropriate word) his characters. Jesse Stone has shown up in two previous Spencer books, and he was mentioned in “Bad Business.” In “Sea Change,” Stone interacted with Rita Fiore, a recurring character in Spencer novels. But it got real interesting in “Blue Screen.” Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone spent most of the book together, getting increasingly cozy. I believe Rita Fiore was mentioned. And then it turns out that Sunny’s therapist is Susan Silverman–Spencer’s girlfriend.
All of this makes Parker’s books great fun. I need to read more closely to pay attention to other overlaps.
Rather than launch into another Spencer book, I picked up Raymond Chandler’s “The Lady in the Lake.” Robert Parker (with PI Spencer) is considered the successor to Chandler (with PI Philip Marlowe). This was my fourth Chandler book. Chandler is amazing with slick analogies and witty turns of the tongue, and his plots are far more involved than Parker’s. You really need to read a Chandler book over a period of a couple of days, rather than piece it out over a longer period of time, because you’ll lose track of the characters and their sundry shenanigans. I spent two days on “The Lady in the Lake,” and for the first time, felt like I had a good handle on everything that happened in the book.
Chandler can be very funny. But in my view, Parker’s much funnier. Plus, Parker has a way of quickly defining unique characters. I’ve tried to figure out how he does it. He’ll introduce a character and tell a few things about him, and suddenly, I feel like I know the guy.
And then there’s Hawk. The banter between Spencer and Hawk is priceless, always entertaining, and frequently politically uber-incorrect, much to my delight. And they tend to kill a lot of people.
