Blowing Through Books in a Month, and Other Stories...

Okay, so here was my original line of thinking:

Robert Urich runs around exercising and spouting tough guy lines in between long bouts of jumping rope and punching a heavy bag, and occasionally solves mysteries. His pseudo-partner, Avery Brooks, stands around looking surly and speaking in one liners, deadpan-style.

This is the TV show 'Spenser: For Hire', and therefore these are the Spenser novels, by Robert B. Parker.

I have not, ever, been more wrong about literature in my life. And I read a looooot of books.

Parker's 'Spenser' is the be-all end-all creation intended by Hammet and Chandler back in the day. He is the successor to Travis McGee and Lew Archer (if you don't know what I am talking about, just follow along...it gets better), and he is the penultimate modern-day detective.

He does not, often, know what it is that he is doing. All he knows is that he sees an obstacle, and so he gnaws at it. He worries it and he makes an obstacle of himself, a nuisance that has to be removed, or at the very least is a temptation to those behind the scenes...And so they show themselves. And then the books kick into gear.

Spenser, a former boxer, ex-cop, and war hero, is a badass. Hawk, his "partner", is a hitman, black as night, an amoral counterpoint to Spenser's knight in tarnished armor, and his wise-cracking best friend.

I have never, EVER, had as much fun reading as I had reading these books. I blew through the 20-odd of them in a month and a half, and since most of them were at used bookstores I didn't even spend that much.

If you've read them, pipe up with the love or the hate. If you haven't, go get one and start cutting your teeth on them. These are not "whodunits". These are not "Miss Marple". Nor are these super-modern 'thrillers' like "Silence of the Lambs" or John Sanford's "Prey" novels.

These are the inner workings of one of the finest minds that doesn't exist that you will ever get to know. And love.

Spenser, ex-boxer, ex-state cop turned private eye in Boston, Massachusetts, is featured in:


The Godwulf Manuscript (1973)

God Save the Child (1974)

Mortal Stakes (1975)

Promised Land (1976)

The Judas Goat (1978)

Looking for Rachel Wallace (1980)

Early Autumn (1981)

(I will edit this post with the books in order, should you request it...Jance is fine. I just read 'Injustice For All' and plan to read more. I could tell she had style, but that one didn't really grab me by the gishkas...)

****************************
I had the whole list on here earlier, but that was tedious, so I took it off and instead just have the first few listed.

[This message has been edited by grendel (edited 05-15-2000).]

"Executioner's Song" was good, yes. That's all I have to say on that, other than "Did you read Harlot's Ghost?"
***************************
Robicheaux is a fine creation, my problems with him lie a little bit in his self-loathing and gritty outlook. Don't get me wrong, I love that shit in a main character. It's just that he does it in a half-assed manner, that's all. To see that type of attitude done right, you gotta go to Burke, Andrew Vachss' penultimate operator of the streets. And, to quell your fears, Burke does not let ANYBODY go. And his sidekick, Max the Silent, can take any other sidekick in history, with the possible exception of the ultra-paranoid and deadly Joe Pike (from Robert Crais' Elvis Cole novels, which, by the way, are damn near unbeatable for their fun and realistic violence factor) and in fact has a metal song written about him on "Paw"'s 2nd album, called, appropriately enough, 'Max the Silent'.

But yeah, that's my take on James Lee Burke, who, don't get me wrong, I appreciate, but I do not prefer.

Oh, and yes, Susan Silverman is not only irritating, but nigh useless. Like that wife of your friend that you can't stand, and are tempted to kill just so your friend can get the insurance money.

Bob Crais' Demolition Angel sounds intriguing, if for no other reason than that it's not an Elvis Cole novel (whom I love, I really do), and that's the only big read I'm waiting for this summer. I say waiting for because I is too po' to go out and buy it, so I must wait either for my friend to get done or until an opportunity to steal it arises.

Other than that, I await Stephen King's 'On Writing'.

I'm with you on that whole 'attached' thing, although there could be a novel in there with Lucy's Louisiana-Power-Broker ex-husband pulling some bayou-style wicked shit, which would be nice. When I spoke to Crais he said that he had at least one more Elvis novel on the fire after L.A. Requiem, but that he was gonna branch out for a while (hence Demolition Angel).

My favorite Pike line: I am capable of great violence.

I am in total agreement with you. I still consider Spenser a viable hard-boiled character on account of he kills people often, and he has Hawk, but Crais is more in the tradition of hard boiled.
****************************
The hardest boiled of ALL, though, hard enough that I can only read one every couple of months, is Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder character. Here's a guy who is just fucking GRAY on the moral scale. His stories (and they are best started with the first) are just horrific. There is no diabolical evil. There is no far reaching conspiracy. There's just some petty person who killed someone else, and Scudder has to find them. Why? Well, he doesn't have anything else to do. In fact, he has little reason to live. He gets on the job because he is mildly curious, then he sinks his teeth in and doesn't give up. The stories are amazingly dark, although I cried, and I mean that CRIED, at the end of 'Eight Million Ways to Die'. The last page is a killer (not a pun, just a feeling).
**************************
Other than that, one of the best hard-boiled I've read in a while is 'The Intersection of Law & Desire', by J.M. Redman. I picked it up at Barnes y Noble for a couple of bucks on the bargain table, and it is phenomenal. Yes, the main character is a lesbian P.I., but there is no cheese and no cliches, that's just a fact of her life and of the story. And this is some dark shit as well (what hard-boiled ISN'T, though?), but superbly written. She's on a small press imprint, probably BECAUSE of the lesbian character, but that in no way takes away the value of this book. Man is it good. Or woman, or whatever the term would be for that.
***********************
Other than that, I guess you just have to wait until I'm in print, or go and read Steven Brust's 'Vlad Taltos' cycle. For those of you that haven't read it, the premise is this (in short): A nearly all-powerful race of extra-terrestrials transplanted humans as well as a few other races to a planet called Draegara, just to fuck around with them and do experiments. The Draegarans evetually drove them off, and largely enslaved humans. Why? Because they're 7 feet tall and live for three or four thousand years, whereas we are short and live for 70. Vlad Taltos is a human, whose father wanted to be a Draegaran so badly that he BOUGHT a nobility in the one house out of the 17 that SELLS nobility, the Jhereg, the criminal house. Therefore, he's an assassin and crimelord, because, WTF, he hates Draegarans and might as well kill them for money.

First-person viewpoint, wise-cracking sidekicks, and very, very bloody. Not to be missed.

In order (of how they should be read, not when they were printed...):

Yendi
Jhereg
Teckla
Phoenix (the prime moment...heh)
Taltos
Athyra
Orca
Dragon

It seems like there should be more, but I may just be getting forgetful and old.
*************************
Anyone, please feel free to comment...

Whatever crack you are smoking, ratmonkey, I want none of it. The best Vachss books are 'Blue Belle' and 'Hard Candy', read back to back with no breaks. 'Strega' is fine, but is lacking character-wise. I read an interview with him where he said that he was just trying to do too much in that book, and I can't but agree with him.

Largely, I'm kidding. I don't want to belittle anyone's opinion of Vachss. His Burke books for me go in the following order of favoritism:

Blue Belle/Hard Candy
Footsteps of the Hawk
Flood
Blossom
Down in the Zero
Sacrifice
Choice of Evil
False Allegations (because what the hell was that?!)

Born Bad and Everbody Pays were both great also, the Cross stories especially. Born Bad has one of my favorite short stories ever in it, up there with 'A Boy and His Dog', called 'Alibi'. It is perfect in its holiness.

Vachss also did Predator:Race War, a Cross/Predator prison comic, and it was good through the first two issues until they changed artists, and then it all went to hell. There's also a Cross miniseries, an Underground miniseries, and a Hard Looks miniseries (which is mostly just stories from Born Bad drawn out).

Vachss is the master. He is in the acknowledgements of my novel, for without him (and the 3 others that I pay homage to) my pen would have never hit paper.

The only point that I disagree with you on is the darkness in his books. Yes, it's frightening, palpable even, but what keeps Burke and his family from being scary is that they have a CAUSE. And their cause is their family, and then the protection of the innocent (or, more appropriately, the punishment of the guilty, but hey, 6 of one, half-dozen of the other...), whereas Scudder disturbs me because he just doesn't know why the fuck he does anything, and moreover he doesn't really care.

Oh, and if you like Vachss, read a friend of his, Joe Lansdale, and the book is 'Mucho Mojo'. Beautiful...

Yeah, I have a thought. Hannibal was poop.

How's that for a thought?

Just as a matter of kind of a public poll here, has anyone besides me read the two books getting reviewed next week, Green River Rising and Bloodstained Kings?

Oh, HELL YES...as a matter of fact, they are not hard to find as bargain books still in hardback on the bargain table. Otherwise, Green River Rising is the one most readily findable in paperback, and well worth it. It will harm you.

Maybe as far as Scudder goes, and I say that because I haven't read any of the recently written ones, but his Burglar series is superb, as is the standalone 'Hit Man'.

Block is just a super-mojo writer. That's all there is to it.

Let's keep this thread alive, people!