Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The Same Book?, 8 Sep 2006
"Hundred Dollar Baby" and "Dream Girl" have the same plot synopsis. It would asppear that either one of the synopsis is wrong, or the book is being published in the USA and UK under different titles, and Amazon thinks they are different books.
|
|
|
11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
white space, 9 Jun 2007
Robert B Parker has taken the proposition that less is more to an extreme unmatched in popular fiction. And I'm not talking about his prose style. In the last decade, his Spenser books have necessitated the deaths of countless fresh woods, if not pastures new, all in the interest of providing a plump dust jacket to tempt us readers. Hundred-Dollar Baby is better than most of the recent Spensers, but bringing back characters from the early novels serves to remind long-time readers of how much better the stories were when those characters first appeared.
Some of the books even had themes.
We met Patricia Utley, a particular favorite of mine, in Mortal Stakes, a book in which Parker explores the serious nature of work that seems to be play, ie baseball. The title, from a Robert Frost quote, references the conflict that arises between love and work in the lives of both a Red Sox pitcher and Parker's detective. That works out well enough, as does the plot, beset though it is by the early Spenser's tendency toward casual slaughter.
Utley crops up again a few novels later - still a hooker with a heart of platinum and an AmEx to match -- helping Spenser rescue the Florimel de jour, a young hooker named April. In Hundred-Dollar Baby, both women reappear. Everyone in this novel refers to the women as whores - Spenser, Susan, Hawk, the women themselves. This, presumably, shows us that no one is going to romanticize the oldest profession.
Indeed, no one but the hero-narrator gets romanticized in a Spenser novel. Nothing else is.
Spenser's insights into women always focus on their inadequacies. I cannot think of one single woman in all the series who has been presented as a successful person. Not even Rachel Wallace. We meet many successful and autonomous men - some in passing, some as reoccurring characters - but all of the women, however peripheral, lack something key: confidence, accomplishment, virtue, self-knowledge, insight. All but Susan, of course, Spenser's own personal Faerie Queene, to whom he makes perpetiual homage even as Parker occasionally forgets the color of her eyes. While venerating one woman entire, Parker praises bits and parts of many with faint damns. Parker has, in recent years, gone so far as to develop another set of novels in which to portray inadequate women full time: the Sunny Randall series. Here, too, Susan is set up as the Holy Grail of women; mere contact with her goes far (although never far enough) toward healing the damaged psyche of Sunny. But in Hundred-Dollar Baby, even Susan pronounces the female characters beyond help: too damaged.
But is there care in heaven?
Always, in a Spenser novel. And white space. The elegantly heavy paper used by the printer makes turning pages a pleasure, and the reader is constantly turning. A conversation between Spenser and Susan can run for five or six pages, without either speaking a full line of dialogue. Then there's a pristine white space before the next chapter.
If Mr Parker and his publisher could just have faith that we will continue to read, however formulaic and repetitive he becomes, legions of trees could flourish in anticipation of the next Michelle Spring or Deborah Crombie novel, for which they will not die in vain.
OK, so what about this novel? The title says it all.
and PS Dream Girl is the SAME BOOK.
|
|
|
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Return to Cerebral Spenser, 7 Dec 2007
What you get from Robert B Parker, and his hero private eye Spenser, is almost unique in modern crime fiction. While so many others offer noir pastiche or pulp fiction played for laughs, Parker unashamedly walks the same rain soiled streets that Hammett and Chandler did before him, without apologies.
Hundred Dollar Baby marks Parker's 34th Spenser novel and for his regular readers, of which I am proud to call myself one, the characters are all too well known. Unlike most detectives Spenser holds not one but two sidekicks, each serving a valuable purpose in highlighting the juxtaposition of his own character. Firstly there is Hawk, the embodiment of Spenser's macho side, reliable, imposing and most of all moral and then there is Susan Silverman, Spenser's long time partner in love and personal psychoanalyst. While Hawk allows Spenser to tread familiar private eye territory, Susan provides an outlet for Spenser's intellectual and thoughtful side, providing Parker an opportunity to philosophise in a way seldom seen in the pulp detective novel.
For this case Parker resurrects a number of characters from earlier novels. April Kyle (Ceremony & Taming A Sea Horse) walks back into Spenser's life. Despite appearing, at least on the surface, to have turned her life around, she again needs Spenser's help. But in this tale of deceit and exploitation, April turns out to be just another one of many willing to lie to Spenser to conceal the truth of what quickly becomes one of Parker's most shocking novels.
In a return to classic Spenser, the usual suspects appear more as cameos as our favourite gumshoe finds his detecting skills tested to the max. The gun is relegated to the desk drawer as this adventure finds a more cerebral Spenser than we have seen recently.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
by Robert B. Parker
by Robert B. Parker
by Robert B. Parker
by Robert B. Parker
by Robert B. Parker
