Robert B. Parker's Lullaby - Ace Atkins

I have to admit, I stopped reading Robert B. Parker's novels several years ago, and as a result I missed his last few Spenser novels. I may have to go back and catch up on them, because I just read ROBERT B. PARKER'S LULLABY, the first Spenser pastiche by Ace Atkins, and it's given me a taste for the series again.

I've never read anything else by Atkins, although I've been meaning to. Turns out he was a good choice to continue this series, because LULLABY really does read a lot like Parker's work, especially the earlier books in the series. Spenser is hired, sort of, by a 14-year-old girl to find out who really murdered her mother four years earlier. A family friend was convicted of the crime and is in prison, but the girl doesn't believe he's guilty and wants her mom's real killers brought to justice. Of course, things don't turn out to be quite as simple as they appear at first.

The plot and the way Atkins handles it are very Parker-like. He has a great handle on the characters, too, especially Spenser and Hawk. The main differences are stylistic and pretty minor. Atkins' paragraphs are a little longer than Parker's. There's not quite as much dialogue. The banter doesn't seem quite as witty to me, but it's still pretty darned witty. If this book had been published under Parker's name, there's a good chance I would have accepted it as his work, although I should point out that I've always been just a casual reader of Parker's books and hardly qualify as a scholar on such matters.

The main thing to say about LULLABY is that I liked it and I'm looking forward to reading any other Spenser novels that Atkins writes.

Robert B. Parker, R.I.P.

Plenty of people will be commenting on Parker's passing, and I'm no different. I'm one of those who sort-of, kind-of quit reading him, but only a year or so back, so I've read most of his books. I enjoyed all of those I read and think I probably laughed out loud at least once in reading each one of them. I discovered Parker's work when the first paperback edition of THE GODWULF MANUSCRIPT came out. I was working in the book department of a department store in downtown Fort Worth, and we carried it. I was already a big fan of Hammett, Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and many other private eye writers, and when I read THE GODWULF MANUSCRIPT, I knew it was the real stuff. I think we're only beginning to appreciate just what a huge influence Parker's work was on the genre.

There are some stand-alone novels of his I never got around to reading. I really need to.

Now & Then - Robert B. Parker

Robert B. Parker’s sort of on probation with me. I still read the Spenser books and the Jesse Stone books, but I’ve been tempted to give up on both series. However, I just read NOW AND THEN, the Spenser novel from last year, and I thought it was one of the best entries in that series in a while, so I guess I’ll keep reading them, at least for the time being.

Parker almost lost me early on in this one when he goes on about Spenser and Susan eating cold plum soup. I stuck with it, though, and was glad I did. The plot doesn’t matter all that much. Spenser’s hired to investigate some stuff. A couple of people get killed. Spenser takes it personally and goes after the killer. It all ties in, at least emotionally, with the time many years ago when Spenser and Susan split up for a while. But what I liked is the fact that Spenser quotes from THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, one of my favorite films. Also – and this is the clencher for me – there’s a brief reference to George Harmon Coxe’s character Flashgun Casey. Any writer who throws in something like that, knowing that it’s probably going to go right past most of his readers, is aces with me, cold plum soup and all.