Tue 30 Aug 2022
An Archived PI Mystery Review by Barry Gardner: ROBERT B. PARKER – Chance.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[3] Comments
ROBERT B. PARKER – Chance. Spenser #23. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, 1996. Berkley, paperback, 1997.
Spenser takes a job from a mob figure to find the man’s son-in-law, and quickly discovers he’s not the only one looking. Pretty soon he’s unpopular with everybody, including his employer, and he and Hawk are dodging people they didn’t know existed.
I keep reading these, just like everybody else, and I always feel guilty about it. There isn’t any substance to them and hasn’t been for many years, and Parker’s been parodying his own brand of macho fantasy for over a decade. All that said, if Chance was the first book from a new writer it would probably be one of the better firsts of the year.
Parker may be, is, all moves/no punch, but the moves are still slick and professional, Spenser is still the kind of character people like to root for, and Hawk is still the quintessential badass. (But Susan and the dog still and forever bite the big one.)
August 30th, 2022 at 9:39 pm
Well before this one ‘all moves, no punch’ became too much for me. I still admire Parker, still love the promise of Spenser early on, and yet they just grew too slick, too empty, and as Barry said, “no punch.”
August 30th, 2022 at 9:46 pm
Yes. And yet Parker, Spenser and crew were extremely, extremely popular with readers who didn’t otherwise read mysteries. It is/was a phenomenon that is difficult to explain. I wonder if anyone has.
August 31st, 2022 at 5:58 am
Yes. It’s hard to determine who’s more irritating, Susan or the dog?