Robert B. Parker: Night Passage Reviewed

 Night Passage is the first in the Jesse Stone series, seeing Stone move from Los Angeles to Paradise on the Massachusetts coast to take up a position as Chief to the small Paradise Police Department. A good opportunity for a respected LAPD homicide detective, except the alcoholic Stone has just been fired by the LAPD.

Robert B. Parker: Hush Money

Hush Money is the first Spenser novel I'm reviewing here, though it's not the first in the series. It's the quintessentual Parker book - well written, well paced, some complex ideas dealt with simply, some detection, some action, some Spenser/Hawk humour. If you like this, you'll like the rest of the set. If you don't like it, move on - perhaps to the Jesse Stone novels if you want to try more Parker, otherwise to another author.

Robert B. Parker

There were two Robert B.Parkers. One was a hard-bitten war reporter and member of the OSS, the other a professor of English Literature at Boston University. The former produced a few noir thrillers, the latter produced an extensive body of work across several genres and it is the prof I'll talk about today.