Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A rough but promising start to the Spenser for Hire series, 6 Sep 2003
A friend recommended the Spenser novels to me, knowing that I was not much of a mystery/detective fan but assuring me that I would appreciate the hero's sarcastic wit. Even if I did not know that "The Godwulf Manuscript" was the first of Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels, I think I would have concluded as much halfway through the book. Spenser starts mouthing off on page two and very rarely stops, even if warranted by the situation. The story is set in the early 1970s and is populated by stereotypical rich people, campus radicals, university administrators, hard-boiled cops, and crime bosses that smacks a too much of imitation Hammett/Chandler. The title, while quite interesting, is something of a misnomer since the theft of the illuminate manuscript is but the first in an increasingly complex series of crimes. But I appreciate the fact that the "crime" for which Spenser is originally hired is "solved" halfway through the book. I have to think that all of the glowing quotations on the frontispiece are from much later novels, although I do see the raw potential for the writer and the hero they describe. There are clearly times when the dialogue has a sharp crackle and it is always nice when the reader is the only one who gets the point of the barb. But seeing as how there was neither Susan nor Hawk are in this book, I have to deduce that things get better as we go along. Actually, I tend to enjoy seeing how an artist develops over time and I have heard good things about the next novel in the series
|
|
|
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
In the beginning there was..., 3 Feb 1999
By A Customer
In the beginning there was the decade we call the 1970s, when Americans lost their faith in almost everything. Government was unstrustworthy, military force didn't work, and dress sense was unknown.The uncertainties of the 20s and 30s made room for Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe, so cometh the hour, cometh Spenser. Spenser is a dissident American; not in the same way as the counterculture students who are the fulcrum of the story, but a dissident all the same. He's a believer in personal responsibility, and little else. He's tough, but sincere. And he's witty, so witty, and sensitive, an artist who's busy carving a statue of a native American. The plot ? Oh yes, the plot. If Chandler had more of a taste for the visceral aspects of conflict, then this plot could have come straight from his typewriter. And Parker masters the greatest of the tricks, tying the plot up in a neat parcel, but leaving us all with the clear understanding that none of the participants will be the same again. This is one of the finest attempts at the Chandler genre.
|
|
|
|
by Robert B. Parker
by Robert B. Parker
by Robert B. Parker
by Robert B. Parker
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). 
Amazon Home