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jayrothermel 's review for:
The Godwulf Manuscript
by Robert B. Parker
Chapter 1
The office of the university president looked like the front parlor of a successful Victorian whorehouse.
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I finished reading Parker's Spenser roman-fleuve about a decade ago, when the author died. I always enjoyed the novels, which are sometimes funny, sometimes moving, and usually readable in one or two sittings. The private eye business always seems secondary to the characters, which I like, though some of the detective interludes havereal resonance.
The Godwulf Manuscript is the first in the series, and filled with some clumsy to-ing and fro-ing to start with. But eventually Spenser makes enough people angry enough that he can figure out the who and the why.
I always enjoy the asides Parker uses to allow Spenser NOT to be introspective as a narrator. They are correlatives for the inner the hero's soul:
....Driving back to Boston, I thought about my two retainers in the same week. Maybe I'd buy a yacht. On the other hand maybe it would be better to get the tear in my convertible roof fixed. The tape leaked. I got off the Mass Pike at Storrow Drive and headed for the university. On my left the Charles River was thick and gray between Boston and Cambridge. A single oarsman was sculling upstream. He had on a hooded orange sweat shirt and dark blue sweat pants and his breath steamed as he rocked back and forth at the oars. Rowing downstream would have been easier.... (Chapter 7)
***
The office of the university president looked like the front parlor of a successful Victorian whorehouse.
***
I finished reading Parker's Spenser roman-fleuve about a decade ago, when the author died. I always enjoyed the novels, which are sometimes funny, sometimes moving, and usually readable in one or two sittings. The private eye business always seems secondary to the characters, which I like, though some of the detective interludes havereal resonance.
The Godwulf Manuscript is the first in the series, and filled with some clumsy to-ing and fro-ing to start with. But eventually Spenser makes enough people angry enough that he can figure out the who and the why.
I always enjoy the asides Parker uses to allow Spenser NOT to be introspective as a narrator. They are correlatives for the inner the hero's soul:
....Driving back to Boston, I thought about my two retainers in the same week. Maybe I'd buy a yacht. On the other hand maybe it would be better to get the tear in my convertible roof fixed. The tape leaked. I got off the Mass Pike at Storrow Drive and headed for the university. On my left the Charles River was thick and gray between Boston and Cambridge. A single oarsman was sculling upstream. He had on a hooded orange sweat shirt and dark blue sweat pants and his breath steamed as he rocked back and forth at the oars. Rowing downstream would have been easier.... (Chapter 7)
***