Spare Change (2007, a Sunny Randall novel).Blue Screen (2006, a Sunny Randall novel).Parker completed nine Jesse Stone novels before his death last year, though the character also makes guest appearances in three other Parker novels featuring either Spenser or his other detective, Sunny Randall: This didn’t stop Parker from being amongst the most commercially successful and prolific of his contemporaries, thanks in part to the film and TV adaptations of his novels as well as his work as a screenwriter, either solo or in collaboration with Joan Parker, his wife. While Spenser was undeniably a modern and contemporary figure not obviously beholden to the past, the series as a whole succeeded even without truly shaking off its generic roots or moving the private eye novel into the post-Watergate era, not that this was ever a stated aim. This is probably why he was chosen to complete Chandler’s final Marlowe novel Poodle Springs, which I previously reviewed here. Parker, after writing his doctoral thesis on the work of Hammett, Madconald and Chandler, quickly emerged as the front-runner to take over their hardboiled mantle after making his fiction debut with the Spenser novel The Godwulf Manuscript in 1973. Parker will most likely be remembered best for his books featuring Boston private eye Spenser, though I also have a great affection for his more recent series featuring Paradise (Mass) police chief Jesse Stone. “Being a homicide cop wasn’t like anything on television, but there wasn’t much point in trying to explain that someone who could never know.”
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