Spenser, Bosch: Old Favorites Continue to Rule Crime Fiction

By Chris Manson November 16, 2006 Issue

The latest entries in Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series and Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch adventures find both authors and characters doing what they do best. Neither will rattle your intellect, but they will satisfy your appetite for good storytelling.

Hundred-Dollar Baby: A Spenser Novel (Putnam, 291 pages) is closer to the classic private dick genre, as longtime fans of the series have probably already guessed. Having only read The Godwulf Manuscript and jumped straight to this one, I can’t say if it is one of the high points in the Spenser bibliography. But the diehards inform me that our guy is back on top after some less than thrilling efforts.

The Boston detective is visited by April Kyle, a prostitute that he tried to “rescue” many years earlier. Spenser did what he thought best at the time—he got Miss Kyle off the streets and sent her to a high-end whorehouse in New York City. Now April is madam of her own upscale brothel in Beantown, and some toughs are trying to muscle in on the business. Spenser feels obligated to help and brings in his funny sidekick Hawk. There is little chance that Spenser will receive his usual fee, but Hawk holds out for some free samples of the merchandise.

A genuine page-turner ensues, as Spenser battles with the usual toughs. The character has also become a bit domesticated—his Harvard Ph.D. girlfriend Susan offers many insights into what leads young women to this particularly dangerous career. There are also some interesting details about the economics of running an expensive bordello, as well as a real “duh” answer to the question of why schoolteachers, housewives, and grad students would want to moonlight as prostitutes—they like sex and figure they might as well get paid for it.

But this is hardly an unpleasant expose of the sex business. Spenser is a lot of fun, and fans of audio books should check out Hundred-Dollar Baby in that format. Joe Mantegna’s wise guy intonations enhance the story.

Michael Connelly’s on-again, off-again LAPD cop Harry Bosch inhabits a grittier, far less comical criminal world in Echo Park (Little, Brown, 405 pages). Bosch and his Open-Unsolved partner Kiz Rider join forces with an unsavory prosecutor named Rick O’Shea — I’m not making that up—to close the book on a missing person case that has haunted Bosch since 1993. It involves making a deal with a serial killer who will confess to the crime and show the authorities where the body is buried. Of course, this plan gets seriously fouled up. Not that Bosch ever believed they had the right guy for the murder.

An unfortunate turn of events sidelines Kiz Rider, conveniently allowing a prominent character from earlier Connelly novels to assist Bosch. Like Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry Callahan, Bosch doesn’t know the meaning of “You’re off the case!” As long as Bosch is on the case, no victim of any unpunished crime will be forgotten. Bosch’s daughter and ex-wife are missing in action, but I’m sure Connelly will get back into the domestic issues next time out. Nothing else appears to have been omitted, including Bosch’s fondness for jazz music. A reference to Evidence, a track from the recently unearthed CD Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall comes at a pivotal moment in the story, so have your disc cued up.

Both books available at bookstores, local libraries, and online booksellers.

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