Early Autumn (Spenser)

The world can be divided into two kinds: Those who love Susan Silverman, and those who hate her. I'm among the former, although I agree that Susan ain't easy. But as Robert B. Parker's Early Autumn, the seventh novel in his Spenser series, amply demonstates, if Susan was easy Spenser wouldn't love her as much as he does. But that's backstory. The front story is pitiful little Paul Giacomin, whose mother Patti has hired Spenser to protect Paul from his father, Mel. Both of Paul's parents are guilty of grand theft childhood in the first degree, and the book is less about detecting crime than it is about rescuing a life yet to be lived, but it makes for riveting reading nonetheless. I love how to books, and here Spenser shows us how to save a child.

Robert Parker has done a great job of depicting Spenser's tough but funny personality, a character who made brilliant decisions for his actions taken in the book. The book is about a divorce between two parents, and a fight for their 15 year old son. The father hires thugs to kidnap his son, while the mother responds by hiring detective Spenser to get him back. Bringing the son back to the mother, Spenser finds that neither mother nor father care about being with their son Paul. Spenser then decides to take Paul under his own arms and starts showing him how to become a man and survive against his opponents, while trying to find a way so Paul's parents won't try to take him back. I think this book was a very good read, and I recommand it to any reader who likes any kind of suspense, drama, or action, because this book has all.

Robert B. Parker, Early Autumn (Dell, 1981)It may still be a little too early in the game to call the Spenser novels some of the great twentieth-century detective fiction. There cannot, however, be any doubt as to the continuing popularity of, and loyalty to, the line of novels written by Robert Parker about the combination renaissance man/gumshoe. Over the twenty-odd years since The Godwulf Manuscript hit the shelves, Spenser fans have accumulated like mosquitoes in a light fixture. We've watched the characters, consistent over the space of more than twenty novels, grow and change, not just reflecting the spirit of the times (go back and read about some of the godawful getups Spenser dressed in in the mid-seventies, and you can easily imagine Spenser himself looking back and saying, "what WAS I thinking?") but reflecting real changes in the characters themselves. Robert Parker hasachieved something remarkable; he has given us a quarter century in the lives of a select few people in real-time (for the most part) without the storyline ever degenerating into soap opera.Like all types of evolution/natural selection, though, it doesn't all go at a steady stream. Sometimes the changes in characters come in short, uneven spurts. Early Autumn is one of those, and while I can't swear to it, I suspect that this book has probably garnered more fans for the venerable franchise than any other. If there is a definitive Spenser novel, it is Early Autumn.Spenser is hired by beautiful divorced socialite Patty Giacomin to recover her son Paul, who's been kidnapped by her ex-husband. Spenser finds the job remarkably easy, at least until the ex-husband sends muscle to try and get the kid back again a few months later. Somewhere along the line, Spenser realizes that neither parents cares about the boy, he's just a pawn in a game of spite-the-ex-partner. So Spenser does the only logical thing, takes the boy himself and tries to inject some logic into the chaotic mess of his life.This novel is one of the rare places where everything comes together perfectly. The history that's been laid out before us in previous Spenser novels is obviously in play, but as in most of the books in the series, the history never overtakes the present storyline. It's there to draw on, though. Parker uses the situation to explore some of what's come before and foreshadow things that come later; we see the beginnings of the strain on Spenser's relationship with Susan that lead to the events a few years on, and we see the real beginnings of the loyalty that has developed between Spenser and Hawk over the past fifteen years (here, they're still hired guns on the opposite sides of a problem, but we also get the idea that Hawk's decisions are made with Spenser in mind). Parker is, of course, at his usual standard of writing, with the expected level of detective-novel wisecracking, lots of references to works of literature, a good deal of food talk, etc. There are few novels that

Most 'serious' reviewers of Robert Parker's Spenser books will argue that "A Catskill Eagle" is the best of the series. I won't disagree that it's very, very good, but I think Spenser (and by extension, Parker) is at his best in "Early Autumn".Primarily, through the books, Spenser has deep relationships only with Susan, and to a lesser extent, Hawk. We really don't know much about him beyond the front he puts up for his clients and his opponents. "Autumn" is the exception to that; we see him treat Paul in much the same way he must have been treated as a child and the same way he would have treated a child of his own, if he'd had one -- with respect and decency. He drags the 'real' Paul out of the shell Paul had constructed to protect himself from his parents and the world and provides him with a sense of worth, teaching him, as Spenser says himself, "what [he] knows" -- boxing, running, carpentering and standing up for something.The end of the book always gets me. I've always been glad, too, that Paul makes further appearances in other books: Widening Gyre and Playmates, among others. It's interesting to see the relationship between Spenser and Paul grow and develop. It deepens Spenser as a character and gives us one more reason to like him.

I'm an avid Robert B. Parker fan---Spenser lives in my mind, and I enjoying adventuring with him. "Early Autumn" strikes me as one of Parker's most touching stories, focusing on the the intereactions of Spenser and a troubled teen, Paul Giacomin. Besides Spenser's unfailing wit, he throws out some great comments and admonitions about growing up. What makes Spenser's remarks even more satisfying is that in the discourse between Paul and Spenser, things are not neat and tidy. Life is not always fair, nor do we always control the awful events that sometimes hit us like a solid left hook. But Spenser also assures Paul that individuals can control many things in their own lives, and that's where our focus needs to be.