A Savage Place

One of the virtues of re-reading is that you may discover as much about your changing self as you do about your old friend the book. So it was with my recent reading of the Spenser mystery A Savage Place. When I read the book forty years ago, I disliked it. Spenser in L.A. seemed like a fish out of......more

As those young kids on The Internets would say: Spenser FAIL! One of my complaints about the later Spenser books was that he stopped making mistakes somewhere along the line. Errors in judgment made him much more interesting, especially in how he dealt with the aftermath of life-and-death decisions t......more

“For something as large as it is, death doesn’t look like much at first.” If those in charge of Robert B. Parker’s legacy as a writer were asked to choose one book to place in a time capsule, for future generations, a story that would highlight his crisp prose, his swiftly moving and enjoyable narrat......more

A different sort of adventure for Spenser in this outing. This time Spenser finds himself in Hollywood, far from his typical Boston stomping grounds, playing bodyguard to an investigative journalist. You can expect well written, characters, witty dialogue, and the typical red herrings. What is unexp......more

ok, was well written, and kept me hanging on, like his other books. i have 2 complaints, tho. #1, i do NOT like how he take "charge" or guardianship over a 15 year old boy in the previous book, and then we do not hear about him again. so, is he ignorning the boy just like the boy's own parents do/di......more