RARA-AVIS: T.J. Parker

From: Carrie Pruett ( pruettc@hotmail.com)
Date: 29 May 2002


>>Meanwhile, anyone read anything good lately? SILENT JOE by T. Jefferson
>>Parker. wonderful book John Lau

Yeah, this was a terrific book and it motivated me to check out TJP's backlist too. I had mentally shelved him with generic potboilers based on something, maybe the covers and a very brief run I took at "Red Light." After reading "Joe," I went back to "The Blue Hour" which I just finished and thought was a terrific book. I didn't much care for the storyline - very clinical serial killer story - but the characterizations were good enough to push me past it. Merci Rayborn is probably the most interesting and thoroughly developed female cop I've encountered and I've now got the next two books on my short list. "Blue Hour" was quite different from
"Silent Joe" though; there were some common threads, mostly setting, but
"Joe" felt much more like classic hard-boiled in terms of plot. though the characterizations are very much his own; parts of both books will probably be too "sappy" or overwrought for some but I found them effective.

I also recently read Michael Connelly's "City of Bones" which I quite liked.
  Felt more like his earlier books than the last couple - I heard that Connelly is switching to first person for the next book which should be interesting. After the first book, Connelly's 3rd person has gotten closer to feeling like 1st person from Bosch's POV anyway (except for the shifts to McCaleb in "Darkness more than night" of course). Incidentally, I just started on Hemingway's "To Have and Have Not" which is most definitely in first person - I think someone here mentioned that Hem never used it.

Currently also reading "Jitterbug" by Loren D. Estleman. This is my first Estleman but definitely not my last. His prose and dialogue are terrific and his ability to capture the city and era (Detroit during WWII) are amazing. Also a fairly short, compact book considering its consideralbe scope.

carrie

-

He got thirty years for lovin' her/ from some Oklahoma governor,/ who said
"everything this doughboy does is wrong" - Tom Waits

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