Mind Over Matter

Spenser, Sunny Randall, Robert B. Parker, and the Meaning of Life

ROBERT B. PARKER HAS always been a thinking person's crime novelist. His best-known protagonist, the private investigator Spenser, is a literate, introspective soul given to quoting poetry and deconstructing his motives after being forced to shoot someone. Throw in a psychologist girlfriend and you have a decades-long series of books whose explorations of human behavior have raised them a cut above the generic detective novels crowding America's mass-market bestseller lists. And while the last several years have seen Parker fall into some sloppy rote writing, a pair of recent books marked a return to his more thoughtful works of yore.

Last year's Cold Service sees Spenser assisting a badly wounded Hawk, in a table-turning reminiscent of Small Vices. Once Hawk is recovered, the two set about unraveling the mystery that led to the shooting. Fittingly, the Gray Man, the hired gun who shot Spenser in Vices, shows up in this one. The mystery here is less important, and less well done, than the glimpses Parker offers into Spenser's and Hawk's respective psyches -- who they are, why they do what they do, and how near-death experiences impacted the two men in different ways. As a thriller Cold Service trips a bit over its own intricacies, but it's refreshing to see Parker chuck the standard-issue dialogue and let his readers learn more about what makes his two most most enduring characters tick.

Likewise, in 2004's Melancholy Baby, Parker's female PI, Sunny Randall, balances solving a puzzle with handling a personal trauma. The puzzle involves the family history of a teenage girl questioning who her parents are. The trauma is the remarriage of Sunny's ex-husband, an event that sends her skidding into an abyss of self-doubt -- and back into therapy. This being Robert B. Parker's world -- we only live in it -- Sunny's shrink is retiring, so he refers her to one Susan Silverman, Ph.D., who of course manages to steer her back toward self-revelation. This is a bit too cute, like the time Spenser and Hawk ran into Jesse Stone, but it's all very nicely written and filled with both intelligence and compassion. Again, the mystery is nothing special, solid if not spectacular, but the psychological angle lifts the novel admirably.

Rating: Cold Service, ***1/2; Melancholy Baby, ***1/2 (of 5)

Comments

[Chris Durso]

T-- Agree completely about Cold Service. The central idea animating the plot -- Hawk's near-fatal shooting -- seems to truly interest Parker, encouraging him to shake off some of the cobwebs that have draped the last few books. Sadly, the Spenser book after Cold Service -- School Days -- is mostly a return to the doldrums. But maybe he'll get it back with the next one. Pretty to think so.

[Tom Durso]

I haven't checked out School Days, but I probably ought to -- that and the next one. We'd be fools not to.