As far as I can remember, no one has actually talked about Parker's work this month (though, as I Recall, there was one thread about who might be Parker's replacement). Oddly, most of the threads about Parker's actual work came LAST month, along with the suggestion that THIS month be supposedly devoted to Parker.
Well, just so there's at least one comment about Parker during what was supposedly his month, I'll mention that, while, as I mentioned earlier, I found the tropes of the Spenser novels increasingly annoying the further I got into the series, in recent years I've found his small-town procedurals featuring Police Chief Jesse Stone and his westerns featuring itinerant lawmen Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch quite enjoyable.
I probably woudn't have given them a try, but I liked both the series of TV-movies starring Tom Selleck as Stone, and the film adaptation of APPALOOSA, the first Cole/Hitch novel, very much, and, on that basis, decided to give the books a try.
It may be that, whether or not he was aware of it, a tendency to "phone in" the Spenser books had set in, due to the subconscious knowledge that it was going to sell like a genuine 14 carat gold brick marked down to a nickel no matter how little trouble he actually took, while with his new stuff, he had to take a little more care.
In any case, the Stone novels and the Cole/Hitch novels have all the Parker virtues, fast pace, extremely readable prose, a particular facility with dialog, and nicely staged action scenes, and, at least early in the respective series, few of the Parker liabilities.
Anyone here read the Sunny Randall books?
JIM DOHERTY
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