Rough Weather [Mass Market Paperback]

As a devoted Robert B. Parker fan it is sad to say his Spenser books are becoming a staid cookie-cutter series with almost replaceable by the number scenes. The razor edge that Spenser was famous for is not quite as sharp... and perhaps dulled by his advancing middle age... as more and more literary time is spent with boring predictable time with Susan. Loyal readers know she takes mini-microscopic bites of whatever food she orders... in whatever restaurant they visit. We know that whatever clothes she wears... she is the most beautiful woman Spenser has ever seen... we know that if she says she'll be ready in five minutes... she'll be ready in thirty-five minutes. And even more depressing for readers is the non-stop double entendre sexual conversations between the two of them... that are actually boorishly embarrassing to any adult. (Could you imagine sitting next to them on a cross country flight listening to such sophomoric interaction?)

And then there's Hawk. Just one sentence from Hawk when he enters a scene and there is immediate hope and enthusiasm brewing in the reader's soul. In this installment he doesn't do much more than chauffeur Spenser around.

The storyline starts when Heidi Bradshaw an attractive rich and famous woman who built her wealth by marrying a number of rich men ambles into Spenser's office and hires him to be her male escort and provide a non-defined security at her daughter's wedding, that will be taking place on her private island, Tashtego. Spenser takes Susan along with him and can't even explain to himself... let alone... to Susan... what his security job entails. On the day of the wedding... arch enemy "THE-GRAY-MAN" shows up as a guest... with no explanation or deep *"detecting"* work by Spenser... and from there we get senseless mass killings... what appears to be a ransom situation... without any immediate ransom request being made... and of course Spenser can't let go of the case even though he is no longer being paid.

Even Spenser's usual quota of sharp-snappy-funny quips are cut down to a minimum, but here's a couple of good ones: "IF YOU'RE GOING TO PRACTICE NEPOTISM, YOU MAY AS WELL KEEP IT IN THE FAMILY." And "SHE WAS CARRYING A PURSE THAT WOULD WORK AS A HAMMOCK FOR PYGMIES." And "ACCORDING TO RULE 4 IN SPENSER'S DETECTIVE FOR DUMMIES, IF YOU AREN'T GETTING ANYWHERE AND YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO, GO ANNOY SOMEBODY." The one great flash of former Parker street poetry occurred when he described the reverence that Ty-Bop a mob bosses killer had for Hawk: "HE WOULD KILL ANYTHING THAT TONY POINTED HIM TOWARD. BUT THAT ASIDE, HE ALWAYS SEEMED TO ADMIRE HAWK. HE NEVER SAID ANYTHING, BUT HE WATCHED HIM ALL THE TIME, THE WAY A SCHOOLYARD PLAYER WOULD WATCH MICHAEL JORDAN."

My suggestion for a future Spenser installment would be for Spenser to breakup with Susan, and then for Spenser, Hawk, and maybe one other respected "shooter" that Spenser calls on in time of need... go away to a mountain cabin to bond and unwind... and in the midst of booze and steaks... and sharing old stories... the cabin is surrounded by a group of bad guys whose lives Spenser and Hawk had made miserable in the past... and the boys have to fight to the death to survive.

This would be a lot more entertaining than listening to double entendre chit-chat while watching Susan take microscopic bites of her lettuce.

After 30 years, the Spenser novels may have reached their nadir. This isn't so much a book as it is an exercise in cutting and pasting boring, trivial and pedantic dialogue from earlier Spenser escapades. There is so much wrong with it that it's hard to know to begin....but how 'bout

- Spenser and Susan do not seem to have grown up on wit over all these years. I fully realize the books aren't moving along as swiftly as real time, yet time has indeed passed (as Spenser and Rita discuss, in another adolescent tete-a-tete) so there is some need for not only their relationship to have grown, but for their dialogue to resemble something even close to what real people might say in today's parlance. I still admire Parker's crisp, uncluttered sentences (though he is getting lazy with adverbs....) I just wish that WHAT they were saying didn't sound juvenile.

- Susan (as a character) is as thin as the scraps of food she eats. Does she have friends or interests other than fawning over her big hunk of a detective boyfriend? Not that I know of. At the end of the day (and after all these years) Parker has repeatedly broken the #1 rule of writing; "Show, don't tell." We are bombarded with reasons why Susan is great, thin, beautiful and brilliant, yet we never really see it.....

- This book in particular seems driven not by a writer with a "good yard" to tell, but by a lazy old fart with a deadline to meet and a marketing department which encouraged him to "put a little more violence up front."

- Other's have noted that Parker is now obsessively reusing characters. Personally, I'm fine meeting up with Healey, Belson and Quirk, along with Ty Bop and others in the Spenser ensemble...but what is driving me nuts is the recycling of character types, which have long been grist for his personal mill. You always have to have someone at a New England college and there's usually another "shrink" and some rich society types who are evil or clueless or both. Having worked in academia, Spenser "knows the type," but the problem is, he is now writing them as nothing but "types," not as real living, breathing characters....

- And that's the real problem. Spenser books have never really been about the story/plot. They were character studies with a great sense of glib humor and what we call "snarkiness" these days. But when the writing grows dry and you swear you've "read it all before," the book collapses. A good story can survive poor writing, but not the other way around...

Honestly, I hate to write all this, as I have been a fan for a very long time. But I've also read a lot more since then, and have found people who intrigue and delight me more. If you haven't read Henning Mankell, then put down the Parker books and get going. For until Susan moves to Alabama and starts a Bulimia clinic, I see no reason to return to Spenser's Boston....

Since the release of _The Godwulf Manuscript_ back in 1973, I have been fond of RBP's work, but it was _Catskill Eagle_ that turned me into a real Spenser fan. I have read everything Parker has written and I'm sorry to say that _Rough Weather_ will probably be my last.

Ever since the introduction of the Sunny Randall (Spenser in drag)and Jesse Stone series, I've increasingly felt like I was getting less and less "bang" for my buck --- not to mention the fact that the word count kept decreasing as the type size increased. But I kept on shelling out the dough...which also kept increasing.

Beginning several Spenser novels ago, I noticed Parker was not only relying on the same old characters - recycling them over and over again and apparently having decided to abandon the concept of introducing anyone new - but was also "crossing over" more and more (Spenser hooking up with colleagues of Sunny Randall and/or Jesse Stone, and vice versa). He also began to increasingly recycle dialogue (how many times do Spenser and Susan -- and occassionally Hawk --- need to have the same old conversation --- always over a meal ---about "Spenser's code" and what makes him different from Hawk or the Grey Man?

But _Rough Weather_ was the proverbial straw. I would venture to guess that there is not one line of original dialogue in the entire book. If one were to take the time to check, I believe you would probably find that 90% of _Rough Weather_ has already been published in previous RBP novels. The plot is thin, predictable, and completely unoriginal (I had the entire thing figured out by Chapter 4); Parker seems to be testing the limits of just how many old characters he can squeeze into one novelette (those who don't actually make an appearance are at least mentioned once or twice); and the action (what little there is)is contrived and boring. Even Hawk, who can usually be counted on to save a chapter in distress, is reduced to a mere caricature of himself --- whose most exciting moment comes when he's standing in a corner, gun held at his side, as he utters the memorable phrase, "Uh huh."

_Rough Weather_ is embarrassingly bad. I cannot help but wonder if RBP had anything to do with it (just as I am convinced that Tom Clancy did not write _Red Rabbit_ nor _Teeth of the Tiger_). Irregardless, this is the last RBP title I will waste my time and money on. I'm just grateful that I read it on my Kindle so it only cost $9.99 instead of $27.00.

If you _must_ read it, borrow it from a friend, or check it out from the library --- Parker doesn't deserve to profit from this drivel --- he's sold us out.

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