I'm an admitted Robert B. Parker junkie. I've read all his novels, some more than once, and I find something to enjoy in all of them, even those that others dislike with varying degrees of intensity. That being said, I think we can now declare that it's official: nobody's proofreading the books any more. Maybe we can excuse the missing period after the book's last sentence. That might be some Faulknerian Literary Device (Parker was an English teacher, after all). But I don't think that explains the momentary lapse into first-person narration on p. 188. I think Parker just forgot for a second that he wasn't writing a Spenser novel and that nobody read the galleys, not the copy-editor and not Parker. But, hey, I don't care. I still enjoy the books. This one has two plots. One involves the high-profile murder of a radio and TV talk show host, and the other involves Jenn, Jesse's wife, who claims that she's been raped and that the rapist is now stalking her. Jesse has his hands full with the murder, so he enlists Sunny Randall, crossing over again from her own series, to take care of Jenn. There's always plenty of psychology (some might say too much) in Parker's novels lately, so there's a lot of analysis of Jesse's relationship with Jenn and of his relationship with Sunny. There's a lot of analysis of Jenn's relationship with Jesse, the "rapist," and men in general. There's also the usual smooth, assured writing (with that one little lapse), the snappy dialog, the fast-moving story. In other words, all the things I like. Check it out.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
High Profile -- Robert B. Parker
I'm an admitted Robert B. Parker junkie. I've read all his novels, some more than once, and I find something to enjoy in all of them, even those that others dislike with varying degrees of intensity. That being said, I think we can now declare that it's official: nobody's proofreading the books any more. Maybe we can excuse the missing period after the book's last sentence. That might be some Faulknerian Literary Device (Parker was an English teacher, after all). But I don't think that explains the momentary lapse into first-person narration on p. 188. I think Parker just forgot for a second that he wasn't writing a Spenser novel and that nobody read the galleys, not the copy-editor and not Parker. But, hey, I don't care. I still enjoy the books. This one has two plots. One involves the high-profile murder of a radio and TV talk show host, and the other involves Jenn, Jesse's wife, who claims that she's been raped and that the rapist is now stalking her. Jesse has his hands full with the murder, so he enlists Sunny Randall, crossing over again from her own series, to take care of Jenn. There's always plenty of psychology (some might say too much) in Parker's novels lately, so there's a lot of analysis of Jesse's relationship with Jenn and of his relationship with Sunny. There's a lot of analysis of Jenn's relationship with Jesse, the "rapist," and men in general. There's also the usual smooth, assured writing (with that one little lapse), the snappy dialog, the fast-moving story. In other words, all the things I like. Check it out.
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4 comments:
Is it only now official that no one's proofreading? I've been noticing it since reading one of McMurtry's books (either Dead Man's Walk or Comanche Moon) some ten years ago.
And copy-editing, even more than proofing. Wny make an 800 lb gorilla angry when you can save that $20K a year, if the Vassar grad was lucky?
You're right; proofreading is a lost art.
Which is too bad, because I'm constantly being stopped in the midst of novels by typos. They just spring out at me, and serve to lower my opinion of whatever book I'm reading, sad to say. It's too bad that publishers think we're idiots, and don't know how to spell any better than they do.
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