Winding Down the Spensers

I’ve finished another five Spenser’s:

The Widening Gyre (#10) sees Spenser providing security for a US Congressman running for US Senate and dealing with an attempt to blackmail the Congressman using compromising video of his wife.

A Catskill Eagle (#12) covers the adventures of Spenser breaking Hawk out of a small town jail and the two of them rescuing Susan Silverman (Spenser’s estranged main-squeeze) from her current boyfriend and his diabolical father.

Taming a Sea Horse (#13) is a follow-up from a previous novel where a young woman whom Spenser rescued goes missing again.

Potshot (#28) is a sort of Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven story about Spenser and his six pals (get it?) taking a small Arizona town back form a gang of murderous ruffians.

Widows’s Walk (#29) has Spenser investigating the locked room murder of a woman’s husband to save her from unjust conviction.

As always there were fresh, engaging, and a lot of fun. There’s only two of them left so after those I’ll probably get back to more military history and other non-fiction.

39 for the year

Another Slew of Spensers

Another Slew of Spensers Since our last meeting I’ve finished another six Spenser novels. They continue to be excellent and I am thoroughly enjoying them.

Ceremony (#9) finds our hero looking for a runaway high school student who is seen by her father turning tricks in Boston’s infamous “combat zone”

Valediction (#11) has Spenser looking to the kidnapping of a young women by a religious cult while also dealing with the break up between him and Susan Silverman.

Stardust (#17) has him dealing with the stalking of a TV star filming a show in Boston

In Pastime (#18) he searches for the mother of his semi-adopted son

In Paper Doll (#19) he investigates the seemingly random murder of a local Boston woman

In Walking Shadow (#20) he solves the murder of a local actor killed on stage during a performance

34 for the year.

Another Orgy of Spenser

Having nothing much to do this weekend, and with the skies too cloudy for astronomy, I knocked off a bunch of Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels. These continue to be fresh, original, and reasonably well written and plotted, which for a series that has run for almost 40 years (1973 to 2011) continues to amaze me. Let me give you an example of the diversity and originality of the stories. The eight books I’ve finished since our last meeting have covered:

An international hunt for terrorists who crippled an American millionaire and killed his family The Judas Goat (#5),

Figuring out a college basketball points shaving scandal at a local school Playmates (#16)

Solving the kidnapping of BPD detective and recurring character Sgt Frank Belson’s wife Thin Air (#22),

Finding the missing husband of a mafia Princess Chance (#23),

Solving the seemingly random murder of a college co-ed to free an innocent man who was framed for the murder Small Vices (#24),

Unraveling sexual harassment charges against the ex-husband of Susan Silverman, Spenser’s main squeeze” Sudden Mischief (#25),

Finding out why the son of Hawk’s old friend and mentor has been denied tenure Hush Money (#26),

Investigating a series of shootings of race horses in East Georgia’s horse country Hugger Mugger (#27).

Anyway, I continue to enjoy them, and have reserved all of the book available at my local library so expect to see more from Spense in the near future. BTW, there is a bit of back story developing across the series, but it doesn’t see essential, and as you can see, I’m reading them as they become available without feeling like I’m missing much.

28 for the year.

Sadly but Probably Unavoidably Inadequate

Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar is a sadly incomplete story of a horrific episode in Washington’s life and our history. The essential outline is that Ona Judge was a dower slave of Martha Washington and had been assigned as a household servant since childhood. She was included among the slaves taken to Philadelphia to serve the “First Family”. Just before the end of Washington’s second term she was given as a wedding present to one of Martha’s grandaughters, fearing her permanent return to VA, she absconded with the help of a sea captain to transported her to New Hampshire where she married a sailor, Jack Staines, had a couple of kids and died in 1848. During her sojourn in NH, Washington made several attempts to recover his property though various intermediaries, but because of the anti-slavery climate of New Hampshire made the intermediaries reluctant to use physical violence, and because he didn’t want his reputation besmirched with a public court case inherent in using the Fugitive Slave Law, the attempts were unsuccessful. This is pretty much all we know about the episode, and it comes from Washington’s records, and an interview that Judge-Stains that was published Henry Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist newspaper The Liberator in 1847. The Wikipedia article “Oney Judge” provides an excellent overview.

The story is a compelling one, and it deserves to be better known than it is. But, because of the paucity of records and the lack of contemporary first person accounts this is pretty much all we know. My problem is that Professor Dunbar, facing this lack of verifiable material and needing to fill a 277 page book, has filled it with all sorts of emotive speculation about the thoughts of the parties involved as well as a great deal of generalized material which may, or may not apply to Ms Olney-Stains. I wanted to read the Ona’s story, but all I got was the brief outline above, spread out over 277 pages and larded with generalizations and speculation about the states of mind of the participants. I understand that this is an important story, and I also acknowledge that there just isn’t much material on it, beyond the bare facts. But maybe a 277 page monograph isn’t the way to present it? Anyway, read the Wikipedia account and skip this one.

20 for the year.

Another Bunch Done

Since my last post I’ve finished seven books, which brings me to 19 books for the year so far, a faster start than any other year since I started keeping this blog in 2008 .

The Bazaar of Bad Dreams is a collection of Stephen King novellas and short stories. This is vintage King, there are some dark and scary stories in here folks. If you like KIng, you’ll love these, if you’ve not read any of him (is there anyone who hasn’t??), this is a good place to start without committing to a gazillion page novel.

I’ve also finished a slew of Spenser novels from Robert B. Parker. These became available for kindle at my public library so I got on the list for them and I’ve been crunching through them. This last batch included God Save the Child (#2 in the series), Mortal Stakes (#3), A Savage Place (#8), Pale Kings and Princes (#14), Crimson Joy (#15), and Double Deuce (#19). I continue to be struck by how consistently good these books are. Including these six, I think I’ve read 15 or so of them and they’re all fresh and original without even a hint of a recycled plot. The characters are also well developed and grow from book to book so we become even more interested in them. This is a really great series.

19 for the year (New league record!)