Wilderness
New York: Dell Publishing, 1984. Third printing [stated]. Mass market paperback. 248, [10] pages. Stamp inside front cover and on first page. Very slightly cocked. Robert Brown Parker (September 17, 1932 – January 18, 2010) was an American writer of fiction, primarily of the mystery/detective genre. His most famous works were the 40 novels written about the fictional private detective Spenser. ABC television network developed the television series Spenser: For Hire based on the character in the mid-1980s; a series of TV movies based on the character was also produced. His works incorporate encyclopedic knowledge of the Boston metropolitan area. The Spenser novels have been cited by critics and bestselling authors such as Robert Crais, Harlan Coben, and Dennis Lehane as not only influencing their own work but reviving and changing the detective genre. Parker also wrote two other series based on an individual character: He wrote nine novels based on the fictional character Jesse Stone, a Los Angeles police officer who moves to a small New England town, and six novels based on the fictional character Sunny Randall, a female private investigator. Parker wrote four Westerns starring the duo Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. The first, Appaloosa, was made into a film starring Ed Harris. Parker's popular Spenser novels are known for his characters of varied races and religions. According to critic Christina Nunez, Parker's "inclusion of [characters of] other races and sexual persuasions" lends his writings a "more modern feel". For example, the Spenser series characters include Hawk and Chollo, African-American and Mexican-American. Derived from a Kirkus review: Though still capable of terrific stretches of unadorned action, shorthand atmosphere, and downbeat comic dialogue, Parker has become a painfully self-conscious prophet of liberated macho—especially here, with an obviously autobiographical hero: athletic, middle-aging Aaron Newman, who writes books "about courage and the matter of honor. . . ." Aaron witnesses a murder one day while out running, identifies the killer to the police—it's mobster Adolph Karl—but then refuses to testify, because Karl's thugs have terrorized his professor wife Janet and are threatening them both. But such knuckling-under means humiliation for Aaron, so he starts thinking about killing Karl. . . and finds two eager accomplices in muscle-man neighbor Chris ("the Michelangelo of machismo") and tough-talking Janet. They stake out Karl's Boston-area home, scuffle with some thugs, and kill once in self-defense when Karl sends a hitman to Aaron's house. Then, increasingly impatient and bloodthirsty, the trio stalks Karl to his well-guarded woods-and-lake retreat in Maine—where Parker's already-tenuous control over tone and credibility pretty much collapses: the trio attempts to take on all five mobsters there, Janet kills, Chris is killed, Aaron says "Well, it's you and me now, babe". Yes, quite a pair, and all ends with some grisly hand-to-hand underwater combat between Aaron and Karl. The action itself is fine and gruesome, the non-marital dialogue is Parker-perfect. Condition: Good.
Keywords: Detective, Mystery, Action-Adventure, Killer, Witness, Police, Mobster, Adolph Karl, Boston, Thugs, Aaron Newman, Accomplices, Muscle-man
ISBN: 0440193281
[Book #80303]
Price: $12.50