Fri 2 Jan 2009
ROBERT B. PARKER – God Save the Child.
Berkley Z3037, paperback reprint, 1976; 154 pp. Hardcover edition: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1974. Reprinted many times, both in hardcover and paperback.
This is the second Spenser adventure, and in the end it’ll probably be known best for introducing Susan Silverman into the series. She’s a school guidance counselor, and Spenser first meets her while trying to find a runaway boy. He may have been kidnapped, but the vicious portrayal of the life the kid suffered through at home — rich, and not poor — makes it pretty much clear that what Kevin is desperately trying to do is to lead a life of his own. Or so one hopes.
Parker’s writing is deceptively not as lean as it seems. Instead it’s fluently florid, in the sense of overdeveloped descriptive metaphors, and still it’s definitely and deliberately low-key and laid back, which is obviously more easily said than done.
Within a short synopsis the story itself probably doesn’t sound very substantial, but within a few pages Parker can strip a character bare. Even though I’m never likely to meet him, I know who Spenser is.
[UPDATE] 01-02-09. A few comments. I think I was right about Susan Silverman. For better or worse, I think she’s appeared in every Spenser adventure since. (Me, I’d say for the better.)
I listed the number of pages in this review, as was my custom back then. I don’t do it now, but I thought you’d be interested in how many pages you could squeeze a Spenser novel down to, if you really tried.
The copy of this book that I read was the 1976 Berkley paperback. I have a copy of Parker’s first book in hardcover, but when I found a cover image of the second one to show you, I couldn’t remember ever seeing it before. I looked the book up online, and a first edition hardcover will set you back an amount in the low to mid three figures. It’s not an easy one to find.
Now take a look at the cover of what’s apparently the most recent paperback edition. Totally blah and generic. When the book is going to sell no matter what’s on the cover, why pay to put anything on it?
I used to read all of the Spenser books as soon as they came out. Something in the early 1990s, as near as I can figure, I stopped. I kept buying them, though, but without reading them. Of Parker’s books, God Save the Child easily has to be one of my favorites.
I suppose Parker might get tired of hearing that his “first two books were his best.” It may not be true, but I have a feeling that a lot of people think so.
January 2nd, 2009 at 2:00 am
When I first read Parker in the 70’s I thought it was possible that he would be on the level of Chandler or Ross Macdonald. You stopped reading him in the 90’s; I gave up in the 80’s. Everything started to annoy me and many characters and scenes rang false. I can’t stand Susan or Hawk for instance. The Spenser series is a prime example of the dangers involved in letting a series character go on for too long.
January 2nd, 2009 at 10:53 am
Even though Parker is playing the same chords over and over again, they’re ones that resonates with a lot of people. He’s one of the better selling mystery writers today, even if his books never reach the best-seller list. (I may be wrong about that. Maybe they did. I wonder how high they ever made it in the rankings.)
It’s hard for an author to argue against success. Parker has to enjoy writing about Spenser. I’ve seen not a hint otherwise. And so he does.
I have a feeling that a lot of his readers read his books and not much else in the way of detective fiction.
Walker, did you watch the TV show when it was on, the one with Robert Urich? That would have been the mid to late 80s.
January 2nd, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Yes, I watched the series with Robert Urich. It was called Spenser: For Hire and I have all the episodes that someone copied onto dvd which I bought on sell.com. I like Urich as Spenser but the Susan and Hawk character even in the tv series also annoyed me.
I realize the books are very popular and maybe I would still be reading them if I didn’t want to strangle Susan and have Hawk thrown in jail for killing too many people.
I love private eye stories but one thing I know is that police departments do not put up with PI’s killing alot of people. If this angle is not made believable for me then I have trouble enjoying the story. Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer were not gun crazy and did not shoot everybody like Hawk and Fearless Fosdick. Remember Al Capp’s Fearless? He was always spraying bullets around and shooting holes in innocent citizens. The tv series emphasized this habit even more than the books.
But that’s what makes mystery and detective fiction so interesting. Some people swear by the cozy or classic puzzles and some readers like the private eye and more violent hard boiled style.
January 2nd, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Remembering the SPENSER TV series from a distance in time, I don’t remember all of the violence. I’ll have to watch it again.
Not that I’m doubting you one bit, Walker, but to see if it annoys me as much as it does you.
I also don’t even remember who played Susan in the TV series, so my impulses to strangle her are nil. But I do remember Avery Brooks as Hawk, and thinking he was the ultimate in cool.
Hawk was so popular that he was spun off into his own 13-episode series, A MAN CALLED HAWK. It didn’t last long without someone less hard-boiled like Robert Urich to play off of.
Urich was an actor whom I liked in almost everything he did, including SPENSER.
— Steve