Robert B. Parker, Early Autumn (Dell, 1981)It may still be a little too early in the game to call the Spenser novels some of the great twentieth-century detective fiction. There cannot, however, be any doubt as to the continuing popularity of, and loyalty to, the line of novels written by Robert Parker about the combination renaissance man/gumshoe. Over the twenty-odd years since The Godwulf Manuscript hit the shelves, Spenser fans have accumulated like mosquitoes in a light fixture. We've watched the characters, consistent over the space of more than twenty novels, grow and change, not just reflecting the spirit of the times (go back and read about some of the godawful getups Spenser dressed in in the mid-seventies, and you can easily imagine Spenser himself looking back and saying, "what WAS I thinking?") but reflecting real changes in the characters themselves. Robert Parker hasachieved something remarkable; he has given us a quarter century in the lives of a select few people in real-time (for the most part) without the storyline ever degenerating into soap opera.Like all types of evolution/natural selection, though, it doesn't all go at a steady stream. Sometimes the changes in characters come in short, uneven spurts. Early Autumn is one of those, and while I can't swear to it, I suspect that this book has probably garnered more fans for the venerable franchise than any other. If there is a definitive Spenser novel, it is Early Autumn.Spenser is hired by beautiful divorced socialite Patty Giacomin to recover her son Paul, who's been kidnapped by her ex-husband. Spenser finds the job remarkably easy, at least until the ex-husband sends muscle to try and get the kid back again a few months later. Somewhere along the line, Spenser realizes that neither parents cares about the boy, he's just a pawn in a game of spite-the-ex-partner. So Spenser does the only logical thing, takes the boy himself and tries to inject some logic into the chaotic mess of his life.This novel is one of the rare places where everything comes together perfectly. The history that's been laid out before us in previous Spenser novels is obviously in play, but as in most of the books in the series, the history never overtakes the present storyline. It's there to draw on, though. Parker uses the situation to explore some of what's come before and foreshadow things that come later; we see the beginnings of the strain on Spenser's relationship with Susan that lead to the events a few years on, and we see the real beginnings of the loyalty that has developed between Spenser and Hawk over the past fifteen years (here, they're still hired guns on the opposite sides of a problem, but we also get the idea that Hawk's decisions are made with Spenser in mind). Parker is, of course, at his usual standard of writing, with the expected level of detective-novel wisecracking, lots of references to works of literature, a good deal of food talk, etc. There are few novels that satisfy the way this one does. *****
This is the one to read if you're reading only one. Spenser is an acquired taste. You have to like the formula and the archetype and not be overly concerned by the built-in limitations imposed by both. For me, when done well it's like listening to a great old song: you know what's coming but there's something irresistible about the melody. Like Ronnie "The Hawk" Hawkins might growl it out: "I put a spell on you."At his best (not all the books), I love Spenser, the wisecracking gumshoe whose heart beats pure and who will find a way to do right by the end. He can be funny, tough, and effective, and he usually knows how to leave enough out in the telling to keep the suspense rolling. Though I've read the whole series, some were annoying and harder to finish than others. My problems usually revolve around Hawk, Spenser's alter-ego-leg-breaker-partner-in-crime, and Susan, Spenser's main squeeze. Spenser's white and Hawk's black and Hawk is the one who ends up doing the most hideous bloodwork because/so Spenser can't/won't/doesn't have to. There's something wrong with this formulation and the way it too often lets Spenser off the hooks he's been sharpening. He would be a more fascinating, complex, and compelling character if Parker really made him face the consequences of his dilemmas, each time. Susan is a psychologist and too often waxes pedantic about the whys and wherefores of the dark forces driving the wayward characters Spenser traffics in. Their relationship's a nice touch, but her heaviness of hand is not. But, for me, "Early Autumn" approaches art, about which I have a simple definition: 1)a thing of beauty in itself, 2)which stays with you, 3)and makes you want to return to it. All those elements are true here, and in deep ways. In art, as in life, a subtle and apparent simplicity is often the best thing and this book is a beautiful expression of that: transparent surface, roiling depths. From Robert Parker we would expect nothing less, who might as well be the bastard son of Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Chandler, so completely has he absorbed the ethos, styles, and beating hearts of both men. In the story Parker gets involved helping Paul, a sullen teenager being raised by selfish, rejecting, divorced parents whose only interest in him is to wound the other. Spenser becomes the boy's surrogate father, trying to help him grow up fast and survive his hellish forebears. The development of their relationship, the ways Spenser moves from wiseguy to wise man, and Paul's entirely believable growth are rendered with surpassing delicacy, subtlety, and richness of feeling. Parker rides the high wire of earned, piercing emotion without sentimentality as only the best can do.Sometimes, when I want to feel again a certain way I reread the ending. It never fails to move me, nor to remind me of how it's done. That's art.
What do You think about Early Autumn (1992)?
Another dip into the Robert B. Parker oeuvre, this one the seventh in the long-running Spenser series, and it didn't disappoint (I read it over the course of one day because that's the way to consume these clever, witty, and dark thrillers). This one is far more of a thriller than a mystery. Teenage Paul Giacomin is struggling as a pawn in the bitter divorce of his parents, and Spenser--bizarrely but believably--rescues Paul and takes him off to the woods to learn how to be independent. They chop wood, build a house, get in shape, and finally Spenser figures out what's going on behind the scenes. Mayhem ensues. Hawk is involved. Enough said.What's always refreshing is the Boston setting, including one scene on the Harvard Bridge (which connects MIT to Boston, miles downriver from Harvard; also known as the MIT Bridge, the Mass Ave Bridge): "The Mass. Ave. Bridge is open. It rests on arches that rest on pilings. There's no superstructure. On a summer evening it is particularly pleasant for strolling across. It is said that some MIT students once measured it by repeatedly placing an undergraduate named Smoot on the ground and marking off his length. Every six feet or so there is still the indication of one smoot, two smoots, painted on the pavement. I could never remember how many smoots long the bridge was." I must have crossed that bridge 1,000 times.I also liked the description of the Spenser MO, how about detectives keep plugging away at something until something responds: "It's like walking down a long corridor with a bunch of doors. You keep trying them to see which one opens. You don't know what's behind the doors, but if you don't open any, you don't get out of the corridor."Paul Giacomin reappears a few times over the course of the Spenser novels. Recommended!
—Tim
I'm always amazed by how subtle Parker could be via writing that appears to be very simple and transparent. As with poetry, there's a lot going on in the spaces between the words. But this is an awfully austere story. Hired to protect a mother and son from their ex-husband/father, Spenser decides to save the kid from both of them. The kid literally does nothing with himself but go to school and watch TV: neither of his parents, it seems, have taken the slightest interest in him except as a possession. The way to do this, according to Spenser, is to pressure the kid into developing some strengths of his own, some belief in himself. He also finds out what the kid is interested in doing and makes the parents give it to him. Simple and hard and bitter. The kid doesn't even know how to be happy, but it is implied that he does learn to walk on his own, emotionally speaking. Maybe happy will come later. There's only so much you can do for a not-quite-sixteeen-year-old. See what I mean? But at the same time, Susan Silverman is in this book, and Spenser himself, of course: living (fictional) proof that being tough doesn't require being heartless or unhappy. Hawk's in the book too, being enigmatic in his manfriendship with Spenser as usual. Yet it's also a more overtly philosophical book than Parker's usual. There's a long conversation between Spenser and the kid, about why the kid's parents are the way they are. Part of Spenser's take is:"Too much positive is either scared or stupid or both. Reality is uncertain. Lot of people need certainty. They look around for the way it's supposed to be. They get a television-commercial view of the world. ... They spend their lives trying to be what they're supposed to be and being scared they aren't."There's also people being shot, shot at, beaten up, and threatened. This is a hard-boiled main character, after all, and the kid's father is trying to act like he thinks a gangster is supposed to. Plus Spenser does have his special way of getting into people's faces.And this is kind of a long review for a book that's only 221 pages long. Read it at your own risk of existential crisis.
—Text Addict
Somewhere along the line, I read that this was the best of the Spenser novels by Robert B. Parker, and so for years I looked for it in used bookstores, but never found it. Then last month we went to the Friends of SF Public Library's Buck-a-Book sale, and there it was! And I liked the book much more than I expected to, especially after I started reading it. Seemed a bit macho at first, but then it got more interesting as it went along, and I found it a very sweet story (despite a certain amount of mayhem that goes along with the genre).
—David
