During the past week I finished three Robert Parker novels. I can make pretty quick work of his books. They’re short, fast-paced, and interesting.

I started with the first Jesse Stone novel. Parker started this series in 1997 about a former LA homicide cop who becomes police chief of Paradise, Mass. I’d read all of them–except for the very first one, Night Passage. Not sure how that happened. Anyway, I finally got caught up (though a new Jesse Stone novel just emerged in paperback). Unlike his other series, Parker writes the Jesse Stone novels in third person. 

Next came Spare Change, about private investigator Sunny Randall. Parker started this series in 1999, and there are six books so far. I’ve read them all. 

Finally, I read Now and Then, the latest Spenser novel. It did a lot of harking back to a book from 20 years ago, when gal-pal Susan married a baddy and required rescuing.

The three series share a number of characters–good, standup cops and noble cons–who started out in Spenser stories. Stone’s captain in LA was Cronjager, whom I’m sure surfaces in several Spenser books. State cop Healy and shooter Vinnie Morris make appearances. In Spare Change, we encounter Martin Quirk, Belson, Healy, and a few other persons we Parker fans already know well. 

Jesse Stone played a big role in Back Story, a Spenser novel from 2003. And the previous Sunny Randall book featured she and Stone solving a crime together, when they aren’t, uh, getting it on. So there’s plenty of cross-pollination, and it makes the books more interesting. Parker has created a lot of fascinating characters. Might as well get more mileage out of them.