Polished off a couple of quick fiction reads recently: “Million Dollar Baby” by Robert Parker, and “Grifter’s Game,” by Lawrence Block. But since I’m taking all next week off, I started a big fat fiction book: “Sidetracked,” a Kurt Wallander mystery by Henning Mankell. My fourth book by him. Forty pages in, I’m hooked. This will be another intricate winner.

I love the old-time, private detective pulp novels, and so I’m going to bore you with amateur drivel about the most famous ones. Please don’t humor me. Just go away and come back tomorrow, unless you envision the possibility of appreciating my shallow insights. I shall seek to sound officious, but don’t be fooled.

I just finished these detective novels, in this order:

• The Way Some People Die, one of Ross MacDonald’s 18 Lew Archer novels.
• Trouble is My Business, a quartet of stories by Raymond Chandler starring P.I. Philip Marlowe.
• The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett’s only Sam Spade novel.

The contemporary and highly prolific Robert Parker, with his private investigator Spencer, is usually considered the heir to Raymond Chandler. I’ve read all but the latest Spencer novel (it sits on my shelf, a certain swell read). Chandler, in turn, is regarded as the heir to Dashiell Hammett. Usually getting left out is Ross MacDonald, who came after Chandler and whom Robert Parker adores. MacDonald, rightfully, is Chandler’s heir.

Philip Marlowe appears in nine books, while Same Spade appears only in The Maltese Falcon, plus a few short stories. Humphrey Bogart played Marlowe in “The Big Sleep” and Spade in “The Maltese Falcon.” If I remember right, he played them pretty much the same, which isn’t true to the books. Lew Archer and Philip Marlowe could be twins–smart-alecky, resourceful, contantly vexing the cops. But Spade is different: a strong-built fellow, blonde, quiet, mysterious, an explosive mean streak. Humorless. I absolutely loved The Maltese Falcon. Just wish Hammett had written as much about Spade as he did the unnamed Continental Op (another detective whom I really like, but alas, whom Bogart never portrayed).

Chandler writes with extraordinary wit, and every few pages comes a turn of phrase so clever and unique, you want to call someone up and say, “You’ve got to read this!” You want to write it down so you’ll never forget it, show it to your wife, post it on your blog. There are whole websites devoted to Chandlerisms. Gems like these:

• “I guess God made Boston on a wet Sunday.”
• “From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class.¬† From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away.”
• “He looked as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.”
• “She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might, if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me.”
• “The streets were dark with something more than night.”
• “The minutes went by on tiptoe, with their fingers to their lips.”
• “I’m an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.”
• “Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.”
• “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.”
• “The corridor which led to it had a smell of old carpet and furniture oil and the drab anonymity of a thousand shabby lives.”

A Chandler book deserves to be savored. Four Chandler novels remain on my shelf, unread, patiently awaiting their chance to delight me as much as the other five books. And yet, there’s something about MacDonald’s books that I almost prefer. Lew Archer brings practically nothing new to the genre, a rough clone of Marlowe. But the plots seem easier to follow than in Chandler and Hammett. Very accessible, and always fun. Often, his phrasing recalls Chandler.

But Parker is tops. In Spencer, he reinvented the private detective. Not only as a very tough guy, much tougher than Spade, but with an extraodinarily tough sidekick, Hawk. Plus a girlfriend, Susan, and a relationship that evolves over the course of the 30-some novels. A P.I. with an intellectual streak who likes to cook, and can sum up an entire personality by citing three characteristics. Spade, Marlowe, and Archer come from the same DNA, the stock that Hammett invented. But Spencer is a first. As was, for that matter, Sam Spade.

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.