All Our Yesterdays [Audio Download]

Surprise! Surprise! This Robert B. Parker novel is not only not about Spenser and Hawk foiling the bad guys by playing the game just a little close (or even just over) to the line of legal behavior. It isn't even about a private detective. Parker's All Our Yesterdays (as in Macbeth's "have lighted fools their way to dusty death." is a generational saga reminiscent of Jeffrey Archer--and at least as good. The setting is still the Boston of Spenser, Hawk, and Susan, but not the trendy, yuppie Boston they frequent. Instead we are in Charlestown, the lace-curtain Irish district, and following the lives of three Boston cops. The first, Conn Sheridan, was a sixteen year old sniper during the Easter Rebellion in Dublin. Later, after breaking out of a British jail just before his hanging, he immigrated to Boston where he joined the police. Conn was involved with the young wife of an American industrialist, a Boston Brahmin, in Dublin. Conn's son, Gus, inherits his father's secrets and rises to power in Boston Homicide, while connections to the underworld enable him to send his son, Chris, to Harvard Law. Eventually Chris, who is unknowingly involved with the granddaughter of his grandfather's lover, is appointed special investigator to stop a gang war and catch a serial killer of teenaged girls. Gus, however, already knows about the killer--his father caught him and let him go years before. After everything comes apart, Chris goes to Dublin to find his roots and understand the story his father has finally told him. The book is Chris telling the story in flashbacks to Grace as they try to reconcile their life together. It is a well-told story, with love, hate, war, revolution, cops and robbers, and some interesting twists and turns. It is much more complex than Spenser and Hawk shooting down the bad guys while Susan worries and supports. All Our Yesterdays is a good read.

OK, here's the deal. Robert B Parker wants to write something different, and he's just cranked out about 6 Spenser novels in a row. So, he sits down and writes this, All Our Yesterdays, a very good thriller, but often trashed novel. Why? Its easy... Robert B Parker is a simpistic writer, often taking for granted that you have read all the earlier novels,and you want no background material and no filler. Well, this isnt a Spenser novel, so background material is needed, you just met these guys. That for one agrivates Spenser fans, they like there novels to start on page one and never drag, but you do need a little background here. Heres the catcher, Robert B Parker also hates background material and explanitory writing. So he writes a vast, sprawling novel existing on three generations, with as little writing as possible.He does it in about 460 pages, (about the lengh of 2 Spenser novels). Does it work? Yes, its a gritty, fun yarn that is fast pased and slightly dark at times. Its also a little sterotypical towards the Irish, but Robert B Parker is Irish, so let that be. Its a welcome change of pace, more filling than most of his Spenser novels. Not a steak dinner filling, but more filling than say a Snickers.

All our Yesterdays was not a bad twisted intrigue, although a bit corny (I still couldn't put it down). But I am always disappointed when I pick up a Parker that doesn't include my favorite old characters! I can imagine that the writer wants to stretch out, but his fans (I couldn't even loan this one out...only Spenser my friends said!) are happiest with the characters that we fell in love with: Spenser, Hawk, Susan, and Pearl!
By the way, Small Vices was brilliant.