Return of the Writing Dead

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you may know it's written by a Robert B. Parker fan. Some of the Spenser novels published between the mid-1970s and late 1980s are among the top mystery private eye yarns ever put to paper and more than one offers you a chance to use your head for something other than just parking your fedora.

Parker's death in 2010 left a big hole in the genre, even if most of his output through the 1990s and early aughts was less than his best. His publisher decided to try to fill the hole in their income stream by recruiting new writers to handle his characters. By the time of his death Parker had added Paradise, Mass. police chief Jesse Stone, Boston private investigator Sunny Randall and old West gunslingers Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch to his stable. Putnam handed the Spenser reins to Ace Atkins, which has worked out fairly well so far. None of the Atkins Spensers hit the level of the series' best -- but they're nowhere near as off as some of the cut-and-paste jobs Parker himself threw out there. Michael Brandman could never find the handle or the groove on Jesse Stone, and Reed Farrell Coleman hasn't demonstrated any reason he should have been handed the series when Brandman's term was finished. Robert Knott started out mediocre with Cole and Hitch and has gotten steadily worse.

But Sunny Randall, the series Parker initially developed in consultation with actress Helen Hunt with an eye towards a movie or perhaps TV project, has lain dormant. Parker seemed to have already quit the series himself. He wrote six Randall novels, the last published in 2007. Sunny had the misfortune of being born during Parker's doldrum period and although one or two of her books were pretty good reads, Parker never seemed to know how to make her as interesting enough to gain much attention.

Apparently, though, Putnam has now found its muse, tapping sports reporter Mike Lupica to bring Sunny back to life in November with a book called Blood Feud. Lupica has written some mysteries and young adult novels as well as his sports column and some sports-related books, and the announcement says he was a longtime Parker friend.

It's very much a wait and see kind of thing, I believe. Lupica has the same problem that Brandman and then Coleman had in taking a character that Parker had not really defined that well and trying to continue her. Spenser is simply more established and more clearly outlined than any of the other leads Parker wrote about, so there's less material for them to work with (Knott has a similar problem, with the additional burden of being a sub-par writer). And, as I said to a friend who is also a Parker fan, I've only read some of Lupica's sports stories and none of them made me say, "This guy should write a book." His reply, "I can't wait to not read that."

It'll be an e-book checkout from the library at best, I think. Putnam's had four guys continue Parker's books and they're batting .250. I'm not sure I trust its judgment on a new player.