>I didn't feel the book was too
>long... In fact I rarely do... I don't mind paying
6.99 for a 400 page
>book, but do for a 180 page book...
What bothers me is buying a book that doesn't know when to
shut up. I'd far, far rather get a short & lean book that
says what it has to say and then stops than buy a 400 page
book that really ought to be 180 pages.
Actually, I've been re-reading the early Spenser novels
lately, partly to see if they were really as good as I
thought they were and partly out of desperation. (We recently
moved from a city of 100,000 to a village of 8,000, and the
only thing I really, really miss is the big library.) I've
been really struck, just eyeballing them on the shelf, at the
difference in length/size between the early ones (the ones
with the title larger than Parker's name and the proletarian
bindings) and the later ones. I've also been struck, reading
them, at how much earlier Spenser became insufferable than I
remembered. In PROMISED LAND, the fourth in the series,
there's a scene where Spenser has a fugitive, a suburban
matron who's accidentally gotten involved in a felony-murder,
in his apartment. While they're both restraining their raging
hormones, he fixes her supper, and it's while he's going on
and on about how he sliced the potatoes into little
egg-shapes and it took a long time that I wanted to slap him
up side the head and yell,
"Look, just mash the damn things and get supper on the
table!" And I hadn't realized just how explicit Parker's debt
to Chandler is--in THE GODWULF MANUSCRIPT, there's a point
where a client tells Spenser "I don't like your manner," and
Spenser replies, "I'm not selling it." Hmmmm.
And as far Crais and Connolly go, I've gotta say I was really
underwhelmed by L.A. Requiem, which I'd heard such great
things about. It was the first Crais I'd read, but the long
flashbacks about Pike annoyed me, a lot, and I really didn't
take to the Peter Pan detective. I read the previous couple
Pike/Cole novels after that, and liked them better, but
probably wouldn't buy them hardcover.
I also picked up Connolly for the first time this year. I
really loved THE CONCRETE BLONDE and ANGELS FLIGHT, though I
was lukewarm on BLACK ICE and TRUNK MUSIC--the latter because
the relationship didn't ring true for me at all and, I think,
got in the way of everything else. (I do wonder, though, just
how many times Harry can get suspended before the PD decides
to cut its losses and fire him.) I actually liked Connolly's
one-offs better--particularly BLOOD WORK, which is, I guess,
a serial killer novel but isn't "about" the serial killer per
se.
Phew. Another couple paragraphs, and I could probably charge
Dave $6.99 for this post (hi Dave!).
Vicky
-- # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 02 Mar 2000 EST