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5.0étoiles sur 5
Batter's Up! Pitcher Pauses. Crack that Ball! Spenser's Heaven Visits Hell., Avril 27 2007
Loved the reality/fiction twist of Spenser going undercover as a writer to get into baseball back rooms and detect from inside the game. It appears that for Robert B. Parker, the heart of Boston's commerce and culture is baseball at Fenway Park. That is where this author appears to live. And where Spenser opens gateways for Parker's dreams... and nightmares.
To me, Parker seemed happy to be writing this book within this setting with mirrors reflecting mirrors of plays within plays that Spenser's opening interviews didn't feature suspects/clients offering delicatessen varieties of The Limburger Reek. The beauty of the baseball scene was captured perfectly, from the spectators in the stands, to the clean locker room banter, to the management organizational structure and press picture, to the sharks feeding among the sacred roots of the game. Even though I'm not into baseball, by page 4 Parker had me hooked into his ambiance. I felt the realism in the levels of the game, felt Spenser's joy (at the outset) to be doing this case.
It seemed to me as if, by this third Spenser novel, copyright 1975, Parker was feeling his oats as an author, had established his commercial appeal, and was really stepping out to write what and how he'd always wanted: Baseball, within the classic framework of detective fiction.
Loved the joked-up titles for his fictional book, off-colored ditties which lead to an appropriate one. I was curious what Spenser would come up with, contrasted to his hokey (as he meant them to be) jokes, and he dropped the head-liner at the precise time and place for effect.
It was nice, as a change of pace, to see Spenser as slightly less of a wise guy and more of a vulnerably happy man eating up the perks of his profession (though his artfully acerbic wit, which I relish, certainly wasn't lacking).
I'm happy to report that this third novel was written in the meaty narrative style of the prior two novels, rather than in the pared down dialogue dance of his later works, though I do not mean to disparage the honed beauty of his later work. Just wanted to enjoy his early, classic P.I. style (with its sensual gourmet touches), wanted to stretch out for a while prior to the sophisticated-dialogue-rap condensing narrative complexity into Parker's signature syntax dance.
As I read the early Spenser novels, I wondered how many Parker wrote with the setting and location detail riding equal to or above the dialogue and interview process. I've enjoyed the heck out of studying where/how his style evolved. Would like to also unearth the whys.
Sidney Sheldon's memoirs, THE OTHER SIDE OF ME does a great job of exposing how his expression was hammered by those jealous of ability expressed well, developed by ungodly hard work with good luck mixed into the bad, endured torture to arrive at a success few could comprehend, though his memoirs explain a lot.
Another amazing example of how life's events mold talent is Stephen King's ON WRITING.
I've wondered if the stalking incidents in HUSH MONEY and WALKING SHADOW were based on actual incidents in Parker's life. I've also wondered if his wife, Joan, is as feisty as Susan was in HUSH MONEY. In the real world, Joan probably wouldn't (for understandable reasons) act out the drama quite as Susan did. But, I'll bet RB and Joan enjoyed the heck out of Susan's scenes taking care of the "lady" stalker. Readers aren't the only ones who live vicariously in novels.
What's fiction for if not to write or read about what we'd love (and sometimes fear) to be able to do in life but, for various reasons of cowardliness, courage, or consequences, cannot.
I enjoyed reading about Parker (via Spenser) wallowing in his passion of Fenway Park baseball. And I appreciated Parker's inclusion of detail of Spenser's personal and professional daily routines. When an author writes when, how, and what his main character eats his daily bread, that author not only draws that character from its essence, the author draws the reader in from the seat of where we all live at base reality.
Spenser's daily routine actions spread like gourmet-peanut-butter and homemade jam over Parker's pages, following Spenser's exit from the ball park, through the following day. Those scenes were a premium use of narrative space lush with syntax ambiance, all of which effected a perfect set up for the riveting scene of mob-type intrusion into Parker's office by Frank Doerr and back up guy. This type of narrative contrast makes high art, the contrast between a heavy risk scene holding mortal stakes, coming on after the reader has gotten comfortable wallowing in a character's simple, daily human machinations, a character running through at home routines, meandering through at play situations involving his greatest passions (especially when the pleasurable addictions overlap his livelihood necessities).
After that stirring of contrasting scenes, the comfy/schmoozing Vs. the risky/riveting elements had welded into a novel I wasn't wanting to end.
(I wonder, how Parker felt chained to this venue for a lifetime. He did successfully manipulate it to express various angles of his literary creativity and ethics development process. Maybe he loved every day of his work as an author. Or did he sometimes want to pull his hair out, scream primal howls, to get out of the detective novel constraints? He did develop other series characters and accomplished those Spenser sidelines well.)
Who would have thought a reader like me, who has absolutely zilch natural interest in spectator sports, would have become cozily enchanted, actually entranced by a novel worked around and within baseball. To be able to accomplish this, heavy-duty talent is required to be firing on all cylinders.
V-rrrrooooooooommmmmmmm.
This is what happens when work is play for an author. Yet reading the Frost poetry more closely, it says, "when work is play for mortal stakes." This play is serious. The work of an author, no matter how glamorous or how fun it may seem, is serious.
A few questions remain.
How would Brenda and Susan contrast, in fitting into baseball and the P.I.'s life, into the life which is played with mortal stakes? The sparing scenes with each of these female sidekicks were beautifully, sensitively, and thoughtfully drawn.
And what of the economic/cultural contrasts dramatized so crushingly clearly here, of lives varying from the clean health of Spenser's personal ablutions and ruminations, to the varieties of physical deterioration and downtrodden, deathly drudgery; from urban renewal edging against City Pimp-ery, to a Heartland Hero protecting the sad sanctuary of his people lost to an exhausting poverty of mud and swill?
Of course Parker dealt with those situations with his usual finesse, largesse, and an abundance of duress. Earthy wisdom was also applied with Biblical eyes and teeth, gusto and grace.
About the sophisticated symbolism of the setup location and situation:
What does contemplation of the scene's description bring to mind?
As did the caring, relishing (reader drool inducing) way Spenser took time to cook for himself, the setup setting symbolized what Spenser was defending in a battle no less than a full out war, which involved defending the continued existence of everything he held dear, including his life and the sacred people and parts in a way of life hard won in the US. The setting Spenser chose for his showdown scene also symbolized what sea creature was at the center of that life, ripping its flesh and eating the people and parts.
In MORTAL STAKES, Parker stepped into the storms of life as we're growing it. He stuck his thick neck out and really said something. Go beyond thought spaces between sentences. This work is such a cohesive whole the undercurrents might be best seen after the last page has been turned. Slowly.
Linda G. Shelnutt
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4.0étoiles sur 5
Starting to get hooked on Spenser, Jui 27 2004
I am starting to like these books more and more. It is interesting to see what topic he will use in the plot. The first book, the setting was a college campus and a missing manuscript. The second one was a missing 14 year old and this one was about baseball. Spenser is hilarious. A very likeable character. The only thing I don't like about the series so far is the relationships with the women in his life. Too casual. Maybe it was a sign of the times (the 70's) but I feel like he uses the secretary and the school guidance counselor for a little more than sex and a good meal. Even so, Im going to read more. He intrigues me.
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5.0étoiles sur 5
Great character development for Spenser, Juil 11 2003
Spenser's third book is his first foray into the "someone's fixing the game" story. He's put on the case by Healey (from "God Save") and is looking into the Red Sox and trying to figure out if someone's fixing the game. He drinks Miller (argh) and while he talks about "Susan Silverman" he's also seeing "Brenda Loring" (always the full name). Susan's given him a birthday and xmas present so it's been a little while since the last book. Spenser goes out to Illinois and New York on some tracking, but the rest of the story centers around Boston. He confronts a loan shark and his watchdog, asks Lt. Quirk for help. He tries to help out the trapped instead of doing what he was hired to do, which is fun, to watch his moral code develop and strengthen. Very strangely, though, Spenser sets up two people to be killed. Remember, Spenser is the guy who a few years later later won't shoot a truly bad guy who is a mortal threat to him - just because the guy is unarmed and on the floor. For him to be deliberately setting up the death of two guys is a little on the edge of his "morality scale". He's like a colt growing into a horse - he's at that slightly awkward stage, but you can see the huge potential just around the corner. My thoughts - I like the "inside the action" stories, where you learn about something in detail. It's neat hearing about how baseball works at Fenway, and the locations are all right around Boston. However, it's bizarre that book 2 was so solidly "Susan Silverman" while this one shows Brenda and only mentions Susan in bits until the end. Spenser still drinks heavily as he almost "doubts what he's doing" - he doesn't have the self confidence of later books. He's unsure about confronting the loan shark. He drinks Miller!! He sets up the bad guy so he can kill him. Hmmmmmmm.
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