Robert B. Parker's Lullaby (Spenser Series Book 40)

I read a lot, but when I started this book, it felt like coming home. I have all the Spenser books - in hardcover - written by Robert Parker, and when he passed, I was heartbroken. Mr. Atkins does a very decent job of keeping Spenser alive, although he tends to go overboard in some ways. While Spenser is a notorious smartass, I've never before found myself thinking, "Good grief, just give a straight answer once," a good indication that this author has tried a little too hard to emulate Mr. Parker's snappy dialogue. I also found his conversations with Susan, the love of his life, a bit less comfortable than I'm used to. In other ways, such as the dialogue between Spenser and Hawk, he's done a great job, and the action and the story itself are vintage Spenser.

First Sentence: I spotted the girl even before she knocked on my door.Tough, street-wise Mattie Sullivan hires Spenser to find her mother’s killer. Even though a man was convicted, Mattie doesn’t believe he’s the killer. Agreeing on a fee of doughnuts, literally, Spenser is intrigued enough to look into it. When the trail leads to old advisories, drugs, and the FBI, Spenser, with the help of Hawk, know they need to keep Mattie safe and to find the answers.Atkins does a very good job of capturing Parker. All the elements that should be there; are there. In addition to the standard cast of characters—it is nice that Atkins as made Susan rather more likable—Spenser’s client makes a definite impression as she’s a girl who’s had to grow up way too fast and is handling it. An entire discussion could be held about Mattie in terms of our view of children growing up today, as opposed to how they grew up in the past and their different levels of responsibility.One can also count on Spenser to trigger your hunger response—“I had envisioned a filet, medium rare, with creamed spinach and mashed potatoes.” He is also the single greatest representative for the Boston Tourist Board possible. You are in the city with him; everyplace from the roughest neighborhoods, to the best. But it’s his inclusion of dining spots that is particularly fun; Locke-Ober, Legal Seafood and, a particularly favorite, Union Oyster House; the oldest restaurant in Boston—“A big steaming bowl of clam chowder arrived with a thick wedge of cornbread. The heavens opened up. The angels reappeared.”—down to Dunkin’ Donuts.Another retained element is Spenser’s sartorial descriptions—“Vinnie wore a navy cashmere topcoat with a glen plain suit underneath. His dress shirt was a blue-and-white stripe, and his tie a light purple.” Rather than interrupt the flow of the story, or simply seem to be fill, these descriptions serve to tell one a bit about the personality of the character: clothes make the man.A nice segue in the story is a comparison of Mattie and two other troubled people Spenser helped in the past; Paul and Z. New readers won’t feel lost by these references as sufficient backstory is provided. However, this reference does help to cement Spenser’s image as a knight errant. But he’s no Don Quiote with Sancho Panza, in the form of Hawk, by his side. Spenser’s advisories are very real, and very dangerous. But so can be Spenser, Hawks, and their colleagues. As we move into the recognition that it is territory and drugs that are behind things—“Territory,” she said. “How are men different than dogs.”—and when things turn bad, the tension is palpable and there’s no putting the book down.“Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby” is very, very good. It’s not an homage or an imitation in any form. Atkins truly captures that which made Parker’s books so successful.ROBERT B. PARKER’S LULLABY (PI-Spenser-Boston-Contemp) – VG+Atkins, Ace – 1st in Parker seriesG.P. Putnam’s Sons – May 2012

I was a little fearful as I started reading Lullaby. After seeing what Michael Brandman did to Jesse Stone I worried that Spenser would be lost as well. Ace Atkins work is reminiscent of the early Spenser. A bit more gritty and the writing less refined. The sentences were choppy with too many "I said" and "she said" as Atkins tried to copy Parker's melding of many short statements rather than descriptive sentences. Choppy. I felt that the characters had lost a little of what Parker had developed them into, but not so much in a bad way. The intimacy of Spenser's relationship with Susan seemed to have lost ground, becoming more about sex than two people who loved and supported each other unconditionally. Again, it was like the early Spenser books, with tight relationships, but dialed back in ways. We'll see how Atkins does as he writes more and settles into the characters and makes Spenser his own. He did well for a first trip out wearing another author's characters. This was a Spenser novel. People who like Spenser novels should like this one too. It was a quick read that moved along sprightly.Spenser is hired by a fourteen year old girl wise beyond her years to prove that the man in prison for killing her mother is innocent. The investigation takes Spenser and Hawk on a ride that brings back his strained relationship with kingpin Joe Broz, thought to be dead, and face to face with Broz's son. Also an Irish sociopath with big plans and a crooked FBI section chief enter the mix. The bullets fly as old friendships are tested and it's up to Spenser to make tings right for a little girl forced to grow up too quickly.Hawk, Martin Quirk, Frank Belson, Rita Fiore, Vinnie Morris, Joe and Gerry Broz, Former FBI SAC Epstein, Henry Cimoli and Pearl the Wonder Dog all make appearances.

Well, better than nothing anyway... No, actually, I must be more honest than that: I liked it. With Parker dead, we wouldn't be getting anything at all, if it weren't for Ace Atkins. It's now fashionalble, especially in the English-speaking world of fiction, to franchise out dead writers (see  Jane Austen , Ian Fleming , et al.), mainly to make an extra quid for the family estate or the copyright owner. In most cases, the result is depressing trash.In this case, I felt Spenser had resuscitated and was happy for it. The dialogue - which I used to enjoy the most - is all Parker's: sharp, ironic, engaging. The story's dynamics pulled me into more than just the plot, as I met again Parker's regulars: Susan, Rita, Hawk and Quirk. The storyline begins with the entrance of fourteen-year-old Mattie Sullivan asking Spenser to look into her mother's murder four years earlier and set the record straight. Mattie is convinced the wrong man was convicted, but the combination of Mattie's age, her mother's history of drug addition and prostitution, as well as the evidence against the convicted man all cause the police to turn a deaf ear. But Spenser listens and soon opens a can of worms, embroiled in the dark element of a Boston Atkins impressively describes as if he were a native like Parker.Keep'em coming, Ace! Jane AustenIan Fleming

There used to be a time when an author passed away that meant their storytelling was over. However, in the modern publishing world anything goes, be that a new Peter Rabbit book, or a continuation of Sherlock Holmes. The important thing is to treat the source material kindly and in the case of Robert B Parker's Spenser, you will have to appeal to a bunch of super fans. Ace Atkins has taken on this task with `Lullaby,' a direct continuation of Spenser's adventures. This time the PI is aiming to help a 14 year old discover who really killed her mother.Although Parker did not write this book, Atkins was able to capture his voice well. There are plenty of quips and the violence is solid and believable. Unfortunately for me, Atkins also captured some of the slow pacing and repetitive storytelling that hounded Parker's later work. `Lullaby' at times threatened to send me to sleep. Whilst the first half is pretty pacy, the second gets bogged down in a lot of characters that slightly confused me. Things did not really pick up until an action packed finale that almost made it worth it.`Lullaby' is not a bad book, but just a little flat. It almost sticks too closely to the tropes that made Spenser so popular. I prefer the later books that moved the character away from his comfort zone e.g. `Hugger Mugger'. Atkins is a worthy successor to the franchise and I feel that Spenser is in a true fan's hands, I just hope that he is not frightened of the legacy and at some point soon stamps his own style onto the character and world of Spenser.

This is a pastiche, stopping short of parody, but incorporating (unintentionally) some of parody's effects. The overall effect is to give a kind of flatness to the characters: Spenser, unlike RBP's creation, wisecracks at any opportunity. RBP always managed to resist the temptation, knowing that less is more. The banter with Hawk is repetitive. Most infuriating of all is Atkins' insistence on bringing in every major character of previous Spenser novels: Vinnie Morris, Joe Broz, the Boston cops, Paul Giacomin, Rita Fiore, Epstein and so on, as though without them we would not be sure of our hero. And the detail, again given delicately by the Master, is overdone here. Still, having said all this, Lullaby's is a good story, richer than those of most Parker novels. It is a heftier read. The truth is, however, that RBP is inimitable. The limpidity of his writing is what Lullaby misses. Spenser always managed to somehow clear the literary palate, like iced water. This is more like a bottle of Amstel.

I think reviewer PG has got it right. There's a strong sense of Bob Parker keeping an eye on Ace Atkins for his first Spenser outing and they've both done a great job. All the familiar characters are there, the jokes are great and the character of Mattie is appealing in the way Paul Giacomin was many years ago. Although it seemed a little strange at first - like someone else's version of your favourite recipe - I soon settled into Spenserworld once more and the brief descriptions of the view from Spenser's office window are just about as good. Another reviewer questions why it should be necessary to continue the 'franchise' with Bob Parker gone. Well, after reading this, I'm very much looking forward to the next one!

It was a worthy impulse to continue Robert B. Parker's series about his chivalrous detective Spenser, and Ace Atkins is clearly a competent artisan. However, as LULLABY proves, pastiche requires more than competence, particularly when dealing with a corpus of work as large as Parker's. The appeal of the Spenser novels lay in Parker's willingness to appear ridiculous; in Jean Cocteau's phrase "just how far to go too far". Even his fawning celebrations of the increasingly tiresome Susan Silverman could be endured if they lifted the rest of the narrative to the plane achieved in LOOKING FOR RACHEL WALLACE, the jewel in the crown of the series. Ace Atkins has come up with a plot and characters at least the equal of middle-level Spenser, but we miss the throb of passion. This is a lullaby with words but no music.