As I’ve said already, I have been a fan of detective and crime fiction and more general thrillers for many years. I would also include the term ‘whodunnit’ in this as I really like a twist, especially if I don’t see it coming which, in many cases, I don’t! I haven’t mentioned James Patterson yet although I will at some stage and he deserves a post all to himself! The reason I mention him just now is that his book ‘Beach Road’ (in my view his best) had a twist which I would never have seen coming in a million years. Please try it, if you haven’t already done so.
Going back to my journey into our genre, I began with Alistair McLean and Agatha Christie, one detective fiction, the other less so. I still think of both affectionately, and I used to read their books when I was a student as a welcome and light alternative to textbooks. My wife and I then discovered Robert Ludlum on our honeymoon and we devoured his early books. On that subject and a bit unusually, I much preferred his earlier books to the Jason Bourne series, good as it is. Other authors I came across and have followed religiously are John Grisham and Robert Goddard. Neither of these latter two authors fit all that comfortably into the detective fiction category but, in their quite different ways, they write exciting page turners and I can’t help feeling that, if they appeal to me, they might just appeal to you too! There will be posts on each of them and, while I am sure you won’t need any introduction to John Grisham, Robert Goddard may be less familiar to people. I have found all of his books compelling and enjoyable reading. By the end of the 1980s, I was a real fan of Michael Connelly and Harry Bosch and of the early David Baldacci books, although he didn’t really hit the spot for me until the Camel Club series in the early 2000s which I thought was terrific and more of that later.
In fact, it was around the time the Camel Club was published in 2005 that the breadth of my reading of authors of detective fiction and other thrillers really began to broaden out. I was travelling back from a conference I had been attending in Cyprus and the colleague with whom I was travelling noticed I was reading a Harry Bosch book. He immediately asked me if I had tried Harlen Coben and Lee Child and it was there that my journey began. Soon after I discovered Robert Crais and things have just blossomed since then as I regularly discover new authors.
Robert B Parker – The Godfather!
So, all that was fine but, very shortly after that flight, I don’t think it is too excessive to say that my literary world changed! My wife worked in libraries and one day she came home with a book which a colleague had suggested to her that I try. Strangely, I can’t remember the title but I can certainly remember the author – Robert B Parker – and he has been with me since! As many of you will know, he has several characters but the main man is the private detective, Spenser (spelt like the poet as he always says!), and I just thought he was great. A terrific character and, to be honest, I can see parts of him in many of the other principal characters I have come across. I was sold on him from the word go and I think it is interesting but not surprising how many of the other authors I read refer to Parker as their influence. Unfortunately, he died in 2010, aged 77, but as I will tell you, if you don’t know already, his spirit lives on as authors continue to write books about his main characters with the approval of his estate, and very well they do it too!
We need to talk about Parker and his characters and I fully intend to devote a blog to him and his books and characters later but it is worth spending a little time on him just now as an introduction and because, in my view, he is such an important influence on and player in the genre of crime fiction and thrillers.
Robert B Parker had an excellent background for his subsequent writing as, after obtaining a BA in English, he served as a soldier in the US Infantry in Korea. That experience comes through clearly in his principal characters, Spenser the PI and Jesse Stone, the cop. He then went on to complete a Masters degree and a PhD in English Literature at the University of Boston, the region where most of his stories are set. His thesis for his doctorate was based on the principal characters of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.
His characters are tough, as you would expect, but they are also smart and interesting and, particularly in the case of Spenser (no idea what his first name is) witty and amusing. In fact, the vast majority of his characters are in that vogue, good guys and bad guys alike, as well as being from a range of different backgrounds and personalities! In that regard, I understand that Parker was thought to be well ahead of his time. Spenser is also interesting in that his partner, Susan Silverman, a psychotherapist, is a key character in the books and the holder of a PhD in psychology from Harvard. The interplay between them is always worthwhile and often makes me laugh out loud.
As a great fan, of course, it was most upsetting when Parker died as, apart from the very sadness of it, on the face of it, that would have been the end of the flow of books but, as I said a moment ago, not so! The Spenser books have been taken over by Ace Atkins and the Jesse Stone series by Reed Farrell Coleman and, in both cases, the transition has been almost seamless. I say ‘almost’ because I do recall, on one occasion, I found myself saying ‘I don’t think Spenser would have said that’ but that has been the only time. I have also tried other books by both these authors and I like Coleman but I haven’t been so keen on the couple I have tried by Ace Atkins.
Just on that point of the authors who are continuing with the Robert Parker books, I have just finished reading four of them and they were, without exception, terrific. It amazes me how the respective authors manage to maintain the ‘Parker style’ with the plots just the sort of thing you would expect and the underlying humour, especially with Spenser, almost unidentifiable that it is written by someone else. Maybe there is a bit of plagiarism or downright copying there but it is all to the good, in my view, and they are all well worth reading.
The four I have recently finished reading consist of one Spenser novel, by Ace Atkins, ‘Angel Eyes’, two by Reed Farrell Coleman with Jesse Stone, ‘Colourblind’ and They Bitterest Pill’ (read them in order!) and one featuring a female private detective, Sunny Randall, titled ‘Blood Feud’. There is a lot of interlinking among them with the same characters turning up or being referred to and I think that improves the enjoyment and the engagement with the characters. I would recommend all of them to you and I’m sure that, having got a taste for them, you would find yourself delving into the many volumes written about the three characters by Parker himself.
That’s enough about Robert B Parker for just now but I will explore his various characters in a later blog and, in the meantime, give a Spenser story a try, whether it is an original Parker or an Ace Atkins.