Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Spenser, Continued
By now you've probably heard that Ace Atkins will be continuing Robert B. Parker's Spenser series. I like Atkins's writing, and I'm sure he'll do a great job. I think, however, that I'll end my relationship with the series with Sixkill, the final book written by Parker. I read the first one when it came out in hardback, and I've read every one since. It's time for me to move on.
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My thoughts as well, Bill.
This is always troubling to me too. He's a great writer but Robert Parker deserves to be remembered as Spencer's creator.
Sounds like a plan. Not that I blame Ace for taking over the franchise. A fella's gotta eat.
Sure, a fella's gotta eat, but couldn't Ace have waited until the body cooled?
But even more annoying? There's nothing particularly Spenserish about Atkins' writing...
I guess Parker's family has to eat, too, and you know they will be getting a piece of the Atkins action. But... Parker indeed had his own distinct style, much like Donald Westlake did in his Richard Stark persona, and we read Parker for Parker as much as we read Parker for Spenser. (This argument is happening on a "Parker" website, too, as there's talk of somebody taking over the "Parker" series.) As I said in the other discussion, no Westlake, no Parker; for this discussion I can say, no Parker, no Spenser.
I'm also made very uneasy by the idea; but of course RBP not only completed Raymond Chandler's unfinished POODLE SPRINGS, but also did an entirely new Philip Marlowe: PERCHANCE TO DREAM.
Parker's Spenser novels have enough recognizable stylistic tics that it may well be pretty easy to mimic them--at least badly.
Good luck to Ace Atkin, whose Nick Travers mysteries I enjoy.
But I'll be standing in a bookstore to read the opening chapter and some pages at random before I'll buy Atkin's Spenser continuation.
(Fortunately the chapters in late Spenser by Parker got smaller and smaller--as the margins got wider and wider--so I won't be standing there reading long....)
The Spenser novels went south a LONG time ago, becoming popcorn reads--unfilling, un-memorable, unexceptional--at best. I'm sorry I can't feign any interest in someone else's taking over the series, though I'm not as horrified as I would have been were the series in question Modesty Blaise or Travis McGee.
Wow. This is the first I'd read about the continuation of the series. I'm leaning towards stopping with the last full Parker novel as well...
For the sake of going against the grain, I'll definitely at least give Akins' take on Spenser a try. It will be interesting to see if he simply mimics the character or takes him in a different direction (probably the best idea).
I'm with you, Bill.
I had stopped buying Spenser novels when they kept changing covers so I never knew if it was a title I had read or not.
While I am not a fan of the idea, I wonder if Parker had told his family to do this. He did try to bring back Marlowe, so why would he mind this?
I also wonder how is this different from Sherlock Holmes?
Seems as if Spenser belongs to Parker. He owned him; he made him....his!
I'm done with SPENSER after SIXKILL, too.
FWIW, I totally get Michael Brandman writing the Jesse Stone books. he's done a GREAT job adapting them into TV movies...in fact, the movies have been better than the books for a while now. So I will give his JESSE STONE books a shot.
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