In February, I read Geherin’s The American Private Eye: The Image in Fiction, and I mentioned having read Sons of Sam Spade in college. Sometime this summer, I found an ex-library copy at a bok fair, so I picked it up for a re-read. In the intervening fifteen years since I first read this book, Robert B. Parker has put out a number of books, including non-series novels and two new non-Spenser series, that really don’t live up to the promise of his beginning four. I’ve also read several of the Roger L. Simon Moses Wine novels (The Lost Coast, California Roll, The Big Fix, and Peking Duck) and they probably live up to my preconception of them.
I haven’t read anything by the third author covered, Andrew Bergman, but his work sounds interesting enough to look for when book fair season begins next summer.
The content of Sons of Sam Spade, like The American Private Eye, offer a nice summary of some of the late entrants (at the time) into the genre and makes a good, short respite from actually reading the genre. It’s literary criticism, sort of, and I can enjoy it.