Very early in my blog, I wrote a couple of posts about Robert B Parker and I referred to him as the godfather of detective fiction, citing him as the inspiration behind many of the writers we enjoy today. He died much too young in 2010 but, thankfully, a number of other detective fiction authors such as Ace Atkins and Reed Farrell Coleman have continued to feature Parker’s principal characters, Spenser, Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall and their friends and associates in a number of books since Parker’s death. One of these, a sports journalist and New York Times best-selling author, Mike Lupica was selected by Parker’s estate to continue the Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone series and I have just finished two of them, ‘Payback’, featuring Sunny Randall, and ‘Stone’s Throw’ with Jesse Stone. Both of them were excellent and, in my view, could have been written by the master himself. Of course, if you are a real fan, as I am, you inevitably see occasional little signs that might not be apparent in one of Parker’s own books but these are amazingly few and far between.
I hope that, if you have been reading my blog, you will already have tried out Robert B Parker’s books and already met the characters but, if not these two books are a pretty good place to start, with the suggestion that you begin with Payback as it is set shortly before Stone’s Throw and the latter continues the story line, to an extent. In addition, a new Spenser book by Ace Atkins is due for publication very shortly and I am pretty sure that I will be posting a positive review of that soon afterwards.
You won’t be surprised to read that I am strongly recommending Mike Lupica’s two recent pieces of work to you very strongly. I know I am a big fan but I really enjoyed them and my only regret in reading them is that I’ve finished them! I won’t spoil the stories by telling you about them and they were both pretty good although, as I have said on a number of occasions in the blog, like most of the stories in detective and crime fiction, they are not masterpieces of fiction in terms of their literary brilliance. As ever in my experience, it is the characters, central and subsidiary, that generate the enjoyment of the genre and their interaction with each other. These two books are no exception, we are introduced to Sunny and Jesse as if we were coming across them for the first time but in a way that, if we have already come across them, as if they are old friends. In addition, all the usual characters are there, such as Sunny’s ex-husband, Richie and his Irish-American gangster family, Homicide Inspectors Belsen and Lee Randall and the gangster Tony Marcus and his sidekicks, the huge Junior, and Ty Bop, who can shoot ‘a nail off your finger’! In addition, Jesse Stone appears in the book before he then, of course, turns up in his own story along with his assistants, Molly and Suit Simpson, various other cops we’ve met before, and, interestingly, the afore-mentioned Tony Marcus and his pals and the lawyer, Rita Fiore, who is also an associate of Spenser. This is what I really enjoy about the Parker series and, as I’ve said before, the other series I read and recommend in the genre. Its great getting to know the characters and seeing what they are getting up to. A few old regulars will certainly be turning up in the new Spenser book and I am sure you will enjoy meeting them again or encountering them for the first time.
So, a couple of enjoyable stories with great characters which come highly recommended whether you are a regular reader or visiting them for the first time. In the latter case, if you enjoy them, the great thing is that there are loads more out there waiting for you!