moviedoors
Indeed 🦉
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2011
- Messages
- 5,190
- Reaction score
- 3,146
- Points
- 103
Blue-Eyed Devil
The Godwulf Manuscript
Night Passage
Trouble in Paradise
All by Robert B Parker. This guy is fast becoming one of my new favorite authors. He has a fast, smart, efficient writing style that I'm finding very appealing. After reading some of his newer stuff throughout the year it was interesting to go back and read The Godwulf Manuscript, his first novel. It's a good book, but the rough edges of a younger, less worldly, less experienced writer is quite evident. More wordy and knowingly clever (though it is hard boiled pulp, so it should be clever), less confident in tone, more predictable denouement . You compare it to Blue-Eyed Devil (part of the Hitch and Cole series that Ed Harris adapted for the screen in Appaloosa) and you have a great snap shot of a how a talented author can age gracefully. I never thought I'd read a western, but those books have the most beautiful minimalism and efficiency of language. Parker is able to convey so many ideas, completely within the confines of story and character, with so few words. These novels are told almost entirely through dialogue, physical actions, and setting, and they still manage to touch on themes of loyalty, morality, honor, existentialism. It's downright Hemingway-esque.
The Godwulf Manuscript
Night Passage
Trouble in Paradise
All by Robert B Parker. This guy is fast becoming one of my new favorite authors. He has a fast, smart, efficient writing style that I'm finding very appealing. After reading some of his newer stuff throughout the year it was interesting to go back and read The Godwulf Manuscript, his first novel. It's a good book, but the rough edges of a younger, less worldly, less experienced writer is quite evident. More wordy and knowingly clever (though it is hard boiled pulp, so it should be clever), less confident in tone, more predictable denouement . You compare it to Blue-Eyed Devil (part of the Hitch and Cole series that Ed Harris adapted for the screen in Appaloosa) and you have a great snap shot of a how a talented author can age gracefully. I never thought I'd read a western, but those books have the most beautiful minimalism and efficiency of language. Parker is able to convey so many ideas, completely within the confines of story and character, with so few words. These novels are told almost entirely through dialogue, physical actions, and setting, and they still manage to touch on themes of loyalty, morality, honor, existentialism. It's downright Hemingway-esque.
