On January 18th of this year, one year after Robert B. Parker's death, I posted some speculation that the Spenser series might continue with a new author. Today, Parker's estate and longtime publisher G.P. Putnam's Sons announced it will indeed happen. New Spenser novels will be written by Ace Atkins beginning in 2012, and Parker's movie-producing partner Michael Brandman will write new Stone novels.
Now that the news has broken, I'm ambivalent, but more optimistic than most Parker fans I've heard from. Feel free to comment yourself.
5 comments:
To be honest, the recent Spencer novels were entertaining but nowhere near the level of the earlier books.
While enjoy them, I just don't have the same attachment as I did 20 years ago.
I agree, Jeremy. I'm interested to see if Atkins can breathe life into the franchise the way the Bond continuation authors have done since Fleming's death.
A better idea would be to have a female crime writer tackle Sunny Randall, a character who never quite got off the ground.
Roddy's comment is an excellent one. I would like to see Sunny revived by a female writer.
I wouldn't mind seeing Sunny again myself, but her series was dormant for three years before Parker died. Apparently, he was only under contract for a certain number of books and that contract had ended.
I hear the Sunny books were the worst-selling of his three series, whereas Spenser was iconic enough to survive years of subpar books, as Jeremy comments, and Jesse Stone's popularity was boosted by the Tom Selleck movies.
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