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Title: Back Story: A Spenser Novel by Robert B. Parker ISBN: 0-399-14977-5 Publisher: Putnam Pub Group Pub. Date: 10 March, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.78 (54 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Parker improves with age
Comment: At this point it's kind of academic, telling people that Spenser novels are fun to read. They're so easy to follow, quick to digest, and fun to enjoy, that it's almost a shame when the book proves to only be 280 pages or so long. The dialog's snappy, the characters interesting, and of course the plot winds up being almost irrelevant, just a vehicle for Spenser, Hawk, Vinnie, Capt. Quirk, and the gang to sit and talk for a while, and then shoot some bad guys.
This time around, Paul Giacomin (Spenser's adoptive son, first seen in one of the best Spenser novels, Early Autumn) brings Spenser a client, a young actress he knows whose mother was murdered in a bank robbery almost thirty years ago. She wants Spenser to find who shot her mother, and, Spenser being Spenser, when it turns out that she brought half a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts for him, he impulsively takes the case. I guess Spenser hasn't been caught up in the low-carb diet craze.
Instead, he soon finds himself mired in a decades-old murder case where all of the principles seem to have been Simbionese-Liberation-Army-type lunatics who waved guns around and shot people randomly, and just caught this young woman in the crossfire. Things are not what they seem, however, and everyone from the FBI to the CIA to the local mafia gets involved, trying to tell Spenser to leave the case alone and find something else to do. This, of course, only provokes Spenser, and makes him more curious about what's happening.
I enjoy Parker's writing immensely, and as I said, the plot's secondary to the characters, the dialog, and the writing. Parker by now has become the closest we're going to have (I think) to Raymond Chandler, and he's a great deal more prolific, thankfully. This was a reasonable addition to what's just about the longest-running series in American detective fiction, and what's certainly the most popular.
Rating: 4
Summary: In defense of Spenser
Comment: Many of the reviews I've read about Robert B. Parker's latest Spenser novel, Back Story, suggest that it is unlikely to win any new Spenser fans. This may be true, but Parker's 30th Spenser offering seems to be designed not with new fans in mind, but for old Spenser junkies like myself who have grown older along with the gumshoe, Susan, Hawk, Lt. Quirk, and the rest of the series characters. After several novels, a series become less story-driven and more character-driven. Back Story is a classic example.
Hired by surrogate son Paul Giacomin for a box of six Krispy Kreme donuts, Spenser sets out to solve the murder of a woman who died in a 1974 bank robbery. Following a trail that's nearly thirty years old, he soon discovers that several people don't want the murder solved -- and that some people are willing to kill to keep it under wraps.
Character-wise, Parker pulls out all the stops. In addition to Hawk, Paul, Quirk and Belson, we are re-united with some of Parker's more colorful characters: former Joe Broz gunman Vinnie Morris; Junior and Ty-Bop, two enforcers for black crime kingpin Tony Marcus; and Ives, the mysterious Company man (too bad Parker didn't find a way to weave Rachel Wallace into the story). There is very little suspense in the book, but that's never been Parker's strong suit anyway. Action-wise, the series peaked with A Catskill Eagle, but there are just enough punches and bullets here to keep the story rolling, culminating with a shootout in Harvard Stadium. And of course, there's the fabulous verbal interplay between Spenser, Hawk, Susan, Quirk, Frank Belson, and just about everyone else. Susan, whom I've often found superfluous to the series, shows her value here, as she helps Spenser through a brief bout of self-doubt. Hawk is -- well, he's Hawk: unfailingly loyal to Spenser and Susan, deadly to just about anyone else. And Spenser never lets us down, working a dangerous case for no money, finding out things his client (a co-worker of Paul's) would rather not know, determined to see the case through to the end. Not many people can understand the complex moral code he lives by, but Susan does, Hawk does --and maybe that's enough.
If you're a fan of detective fiction and you've never read a Spenser novel, I would recommend that you begin from the beginning and pick up The Godwulf Manuscript, the inaugural novel of the series (I would also wonder what planet you are from, but that's neither here nor there). The Spenser novels truly are one of the great treasures of contemporary American fiction. Back Story is a satisfying read, but it is nothing special -- unless you spend a little time with the characters first.
Rating: 3
Summary: Parker's Back
Comment: Parker has really made an effort here, and it shows. Recent books were getting thinner and more off-hand, and the last in the Spenser series, "Widow's Walk" read like Parker wrote it while he was watching a ball game. But in "Back Story," Parker has done it for us again. It's not the "Godwulf Manuscript" and it's certainly not "Looking for Rachel Wallace," but it has depth and heft, and a fresh plot that involves us in some very satisfying intricacy as it works itself out. Spenser shows more of himself, and our understanding of him deepens. Here it isn't an appealing client needing real help that is the reason he keeps going; it is his own choice to finish what he started, even at considerable cost. He is "peerless," as Susan Silverman says, a man of integrity, humanity and power, whose choices, like this one, come always from a place of honor. And he still is as funny as he always was, with the same discerning eye, seeing everyone, from aging hippies to aging mobsters, right through any pretension or fascade, seeing the good in the bad guys and the bad in the good guys, seeing things as they are.
There are signs here that Parker is making some acknowledgement to the fact that if Spenser fought in Korea, he can't really be 42 years old anymore. Now he does weightlifting for repetition, rather than for weight, he does measured runs, with walk breaks, on Harvard's track, rather than pounding for miles along the Charles River. He decides to have one English muffin because the second one he wants isn't good for him. The women he says look pretty good are in their fifties, and both he and Hawk say sadly "Too young" when teenagers walk by in bikinis. But may I suggest here that a "willing suspension of disbelief" is more than appropriate. We may all be aging, but Spenser doesn't really have to, unless we insist on it. Rex Stout's Archie Goodwin would have been in a wheelchair in real time during many of his most useful flirtations. Nero Wolfe himself would have been about 112 years old when he solved his last cases. Sherlock Holmes could not actually have dealt both with Victorian hounds and the Norden Bombsite in the same adult lifetime. I think that, along with Parker, we should make no more than a gentle reference to Spenser's age, and then leave it alone. If we lean on it too much, Spenser may retire, and I, for one, am not ready.
In "Back Story" Parker brings down barriers between story lines, and even across series. It is very appealing to have two heavy-weight thugs who tried to kill Spenser in "Pastime" sitting on the steps of Susan's classy house to guard her. And Parker has Spenser work with Jesse Stone in this one, so we get to see Jesse through Spenser's eyes. I'd very much like to know how Spenser looks to Jesse. And, hey, Sunny works in Boston. There are all sorts of possibilities.
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Title: Stone Cold: A Jesse Stone Novel by Robert B. Parker ISBN: 0399150870 Publisher: Putnam Pub Group Pub. Date: 29 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Bad Business by Robert B. Parker ISBN: 0399151451 Publisher: Penguin USA Pub. Date: 08 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Shrink Rap by Robert B. Parker ISBN: 0515136204 Publisher: Jove Pubns Pub. Date: 30 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Widow's Walk by Robert B. Parker ISBN: 042518904X Publisher: Berkley Pub Group Pub. Date: 04 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Lost Light by Michael Connelly ISBN: 0316154601 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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