Publication
Dell, c1987.
Collection
Series
Status
Available
Description
Fiction. Mystery. Thriller. HTML:�??Ebullient entertainment.�?��??Time A hotshot reporter is dead. He'd gone to take a look-see at �??Miami North�?��??little Wheaton, Massachusetts�??the biggest cocaine distribution center above the Mason-Dixon line. Did the kid die for getting too close to the truth . . . or to a sweet lady with a jealous husband? Spenser will stop at nothing to find out. Praise for Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels �??Like Philip Marlowe, Spenser is a man of honor in a dishonorable world. When he says he will do something, it is done. The dialogues zings, and there is plenty of action . . . but it is the moral element that sets them above most detective fiction.�?��??Newsweek�??Crackling dialogue, plenty of action and expert writing . . . Unexpectedly literate�??[Spenser is] in many respects the very exemplar of the species.�?��??The New York Times �??They just don�??t make private eyes tougher or funnier.�?��??People �??Parker has a recorder�??s ear for dialogue, an agile wit . . . and, strangely enough, a soupçon of compassion hidden under that sardonic, flip exterior.�?��??Los Angeles Times �??A deft storyteller, a master of pace.�?��??The Philadelphia Inquirer �??Spenser probably had more to do with changing the private eye from a coffin-chaser to a full-bodied human being than any other detective hero.�?��??The Chicago Sun-Times �??[Spenser is] to… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member raizel
Spenser is asked to look into the murder of a reporter who had been investigating drug sales in a small town in Massachusetts. He does what he usually does, asking questions and bothering people until he eventually figures out what is going on. Unfortunately, as usual, people die who would not have
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if he hadn't been doing what he usually does. Show Less
LibraryThing member librisissimo
Substance: Coke dealers and crooked cops in Massachusetts.
Style: The white space in this book makes it come to about half the nominal 256 pages. The trivial detail is boring. The hero is stupid. The language is "authentic."
Will not be reading any more of these, despite their high acclaim by others.
Style: The white space in this book makes it come to about half the nominal 256 pages. The trivial detail is boring. The hero is stupid. The language is "authentic."
Will not be reading any more of these, despite their high acclaim by others.
LibraryThing member AmberMcWilliams
Cocaine and small town prejudice make for an edgy environment for Spenser to operate.
LibraryThing member nbmars
Pale Kings and Princes is the fourteenth of Robert B. Parker’s forty Spenser novels. The title comes from the poem La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad by John Keats.
In this book, Boston P.I. Spenser is hired by a local newspaper to investigate the murder of one of its reporters who had been
With the assistance of an honest and competent state policeman and Spenser’s super macho buddy, Hawk, Spenser is able to solve the mystery of the reporter’s death, break up the drug-smuggling ring, and dispose of two very dishonest local cops.
Before the final showdown with the drug dealers, Hawk suggests that the safest course of action would be to just shoot the dealers when they weren’t looking. Spenser replies:
“Yes, But I can’t.”
“I know you can’t. What I don’t know,” Hawk said, “is why you can’t.”
“Remember those guys in Maine got busted for shooting bears in cages?” I said.
“Didn’t get bit by the bear,” Hawk said.
“Would you do it?” I said.
“No,” Hawk said.
I didn’t say anything.
“The analogy sucks,” Hawk said.
Thus, as always, Spenser maintains his knight errant code of ethics.
Spenser’s girl friend, Susan Silverman, is not as cloying as she is in other Spenser novels, and plays an important role in this one. As all Parker novels, this is an easy read, but it does not stand out among the others. Nevertheless, it is a good companion for a long airplane ride.
(JAB)
In this book, Boston P.I. Spenser is hired by a local newspaper to investigate the murder of one of its reporters who had been
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looking into the drug smuggling industry in a small town in west central Massachusetts. When Spenser arrives in town, he finds that none of the local people want to talk to him and the local police are very uncooperative. With the assistance of an honest and competent state policeman and Spenser’s super macho buddy, Hawk, Spenser is able to solve the mystery of the reporter’s death, break up the drug-smuggling ring, and dispose of two very dishonest local cops.
Before the final showdown with the drug dealers, Hawk suggests that the safest course of action would be to just shoot the dealers when they weren’t looking. Spenser replies:
“Yes, But I can’t.”
“I know you can’t. What I don’t know,” Hawk said, “is why you can’t.”
“Remember those guys in Maine got busted for shooting bears in cages?” I said.
“Didn’t get bit by the bear,” Hawk said.
“Would you do it?” I said.
“No,” Hawk said.
I didn’t say anything.
“The analogy sucks,” Hawk said.
Thus, as always, Spenser maintains his knight errant code of ethics.
Spenser’s girl friend, Susan Silverman, is not as cloying as she is in other Spenser novels, and plays an important role in this one. As all Parker novels, this is an easy read, but it does not stand out among the others. Nevertheless, it is a good companion for a long airplane ride.
(JAB)
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LibraryThing member joeldinda
The ending's inevitable, but still seems forced. Snappy dialog throughout, though; especially after Hawk joins the story.
LibraryThing member ritaer
Spenser and corrupt cops again, Yawn.
LibraryThing member SamSattler
Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series is the first detective series that really caught my imagination. The series began in 1973 with The Godwulf Manuscript, but I didn’t discover the books until 1983 when I spotted a paperback copy of Ceremony, the ninth Spenser novel, in a local bookstore. The
By the time Parker died in 2010, he had written thirty-eight Spenser novels, but the series was still not complete. Two more completed Spenser novels were posthumously released, and the partially-completed Spenser book he was working on at the time of his death, Silent Night, was finished by his literary agent and published in 2013. In addition to these forty-one Spenser novels, Ace Atkins, author of the Quinn Colson series (a series I highly recommend), has added five more Spenser novels to the series. 1987’s Pale Kings and Princes is the fourteenth Spenser novel, about one-third of the way into the forty-one-book series.
This time around, Spenser is hired by a newspaper to investigate the murder of one of its reporters who had been prying into the massive cocaine trade centered in Wheaton, Massachusetts, when he was killed. It doesn’t take Spenser long to get himself into the same predicament that got the reporter killed. Wheaton is under the thumb of a Columbian kingpin who will do anything to keep it that way and, with the help of the Wheaton cops, any threats to the Columbian, including people like Spenser, are usually quickly eliminated. Spenser, though, is as persistent as he his tough, and he doesn’t plan to go anywhere until he gets justice for the murdered reporter – even if he has to dispense that justice himself.
According to Spenser, what he does best is annoy people enough to make them do things that lead him to more people to annoy. He puts it this way:
“I don’t know what’s going on so I wander around and ask questions and annoy people and finally somebody says something or does something then I wander around and ask questions about that and annoy people and so on. Better than sitting up in a tree with a spyglass.”
However he does it, Spenser always gets answers. He’s really good at annoying people. And with a whole lot of help from Hawk, the huge black man who is also Spenser’s best friend, and Susan, the love of his life (at least to this point in the series), he will stay alive long enough to make the right people pay again this time. Spenser, Hawk, and Susan, different as they are from each other, make one hell of a team.
Bottom Line: Pale Kings and Princes cannot be said to be one of the stronger books in the Spenser series because the crime being investigated is a fairly standard one even for its day. But with the Spenser books, it’s not so much about the crime or mystery anyway. The real fun comes from watching Spenser, Hawk, and Susan work together as their relationships evolve over time. Susan is well represented in this one, Hawk not so much. And that’s a shame, because underusing Hawk is never a good thing. Just ask Spenser.
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good news, and probably the reason I got instantly stuck on the series, was that I had an eight-book Spenser backlist to explore, and I hurried to do just that. Then, over the next couple of decades, I had to wait for them to come trickling out one-by-one like everyone else. By the time Parker died in 2010, he had written thirty-eight Spenser novels, but the series was still not complete. Two more completed Spenser novels were posthumously released, and the partially-completed Spenser book he was working on at the time of his death, Silent Night, was finished by his literary agent and published in 2013. In addition to these forty-one Spenser novels, Ace Atkins, author of the Quinn Colson series (a series I highly recommend), has added five more Spenser novels to the series. 1987’s Pale Kings and Princes is the fourteenth Spenser novel, about one-third of the way into the forty-one-book series.
This time around, Spenser is hired by a newspaper to investigate the murder of one of its reporters who had been prying into the massive cocaine trade centered in Wheaton, Massachusetts, when he was killed. It doesn’t take Spenser long to get himself into the same predicament that got the reporter killed. Wheaton is under the thumb of a Columbian kingpin who will do anything to keep it that way and, with the help of the Wheaton cops, any threats to the Columbian, including people like Spenser, are usually quickly eliminated. Spenser, though, is as persistent as he his tough, and he doesn’t plan to go anywhere until he gets justice for the murdered reporter – even if he has to dispense that justice himself.
According to Spenser, what he does best is annoy people enough to make them do things that lead him to more people to annoy. He puts it this way:
“I don’t know what’s going on so I wander around and ask questions and annoy people and finally somebody says something or does something then I wander around and ask questions about that and annoy people and so on. Better than sitting up in a tree with a spyglass.”
However he does it, Spenser always gets answers. He’s really good at annoying people. And with a whole lot of help from Hawk, the huge black man who is also Spenser’s best friend, and Susan, the love of his life (at least to this point in the series), he will stay alive long enough to make the right people pay again this time. Spenser, Hawk, and Susan, different as they are from each other, make one hell of a team.
Bottom Line: Pale Kings and Princes cannot be said to be one of the stronger books in the Spenser series because the crime being investigated is a fairly standard one even for its day. But with the Spenser books, it’s not so much about the crime or mystery anyway. The real fun comes from watching Spenser, Hawk, and Susan work together as their relationships evolve over time. Susan is well represented in this one, Hawk not so much. And that’s a shame, because underusing Hawk is never a good thing. Just ask Spenser.
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LibraryThing member LyndaInOregon
There are just some things you know you can count on. You know your driver’s license photo will make you look like an axe-murderer. You know a dropped piece of toast will land jelly-side down. And you know that a Robert B. Parker Spenser novel will give you a solid read.
‘Pale Kings and
‘Pale Kings and
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Princes’ is no different. Sent off to a small Massachusetts town to investigate the murder of a young reporter, Spenser quickly finds himself up to his neck in cocaine dealers, crooked cops, and people who aren’t quite telling the truth. How he gets past the not quite part and deals out his own particular kind of justice forms the backbone of the story. The usual cast of characters is on hand, the usual wry dialogue is spoken, and satisfaction happens all around. Show Less
Language
Original language
English
ISBN
0440200040 / 9780440200048
Original publication date
1987