{"id":2149,"date":"2017-06-26T12:39:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-26T19:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=2149"},"modified":"2017-06-26T12:39:00","modified_gmt":"2017-06-26T19:39:00","slug":"a-comfortable-ride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=2149","title":{"rendered":"A comfortable ride"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bob Moyer, traveling \u00a0gourmet, has found time to sample\u00a0a new book and write a review.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer<\/p>\n

Robert B. Parker\u2019s\u00a0LITTLE WHITE LIES. By Ace Atkinson. Putnam. 304 pages. $27.<\/p>\n

\"Lies\"<\/a>After dozens of Spenser adventures by Robert B. Parker, and now seven by his chosen successor, Ace Atkinson,\u00a0the formula is pretty clear.\u00a0There\u2019s never much mystery about whodunit.\u00a0Someone shows up in Spenser\u2019s office, interests him in a case, and before long he\u2019s onto the bad guy.\u00a0For the rest of the book, he employs his\u00a0patented investigative technique \u2013 \u201cWhen at first you don\u2019t succeed, keep bugging the hell out of people and see what shakes out\u201d \u2013 and then wreaks justice, legal or otherwise, on the villain.\u00a0With this patented lack of plot excitement, what keeps Spenser\u2019s fans coming back?<\/p>\n

Simple. For the ride.<\/p>\n

Time spent with a Spenser novel is a trip around Spenser\u2019s Boston (the endpapers are maps), making familiar stops along the way. In this latest case, he takes on a client who lost\u00a0a huge sum to a con artist. To track him down, Spenser talks with his lawyer over Schnitzel and a Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout at Jonathan Ives\u2019, and interviews his\u00a0cop contact over eggs, hash and raisin toast at Agawam\u2019s. Long-time trainer Henry Cimoli puts him through a rigorous workout at his gym, as a prelude to the requisite fistfight with mercenaries later in the book. And, of course, Spenser fixes a dinner of\u00a0poulet au citron et lavande<\/em>\u00a0with a bottle of Macon, Joe Williams playing on the stereo, and dialogue like this with Susan, his significant other:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe chicken might take a while.\u201d \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Susan gave a wicked grin. \u201cThat\u2019s like saying your car ran out of gas.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cDid I mention my chicken is free range?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThat,\u201d she said, \u201cand then some. But I know where it roosts.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>And then the punch line \u2014<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>\u201cI can take care of your chicken after dinner.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Through it all, Spenser rattles off bon mots, banter, and quotes from sources as varied as Shakespeare, Joe\u00a0Friday, and\u00a0Sir Galahad \u2013 sometimes two on a page. During the ultimate gun battle in the Vermont woods, joined by his sidekick Hawk, he even works in two lines from Robert Frost between shotgun blasts. Oh, and he does get\u00a0the money back.<\/p>\n

All in all, it\u2019s a comfortable, familiar ride with one caveat. Readers can usually rip through a Spenser novel in as little as one sitting. This time, however, the read takes a bit longer. Parker and now Atkinson usually adhere to tenet #10 of ELMORE LEONARD\u2019S 10 RULES OF WRITING:<\/p>\n

\u201cTry to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.\u201d<\/p>\n

It seems Parker\u2019s designated successor has left a few of those parts lying around in the narrative of this latest adventure.<\/p>\n

Just sayin\u2019.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bob Moyer, traveling \u00a0gourmet, has found time to sample\u00a0a new book and write a review. Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer Robert B. Parker\u2019s\u00a0LITTLE WHITE LIES. By Ace Atkinson. Putnam. 304 pages. $27. After dozens of Spenser adventures by Robert B. Parker, and now seven by his chosen successor, Ace Atkinson,\u00a0the formula is pretty clear.\u00a0There\u2019s never […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[590,5,14],"tags":[320,973],"class_list":["post-2149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-detective-fiction-mysteries","category-mysteries","category-thriller-suspense","tag-robert-b-parker","tag-spenser-ace-atkinson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2149"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2151,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149\/revisions\/2151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}