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Pale Kings And Princes, a Spenser Novel by…
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Pale Kings And Princes, a Spenser Novel (original 1987; edition 1987)

by Robert B. Parker

Series: Spenser (14)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
1,0581519,134 (3.63)42
Fiction. Mystery. Thriller. HTML:??Ebullient entertainment.???Time
A hotshot reporter is dead. He'd gone to take a look-see at ??Miami North???little Wheaton, Massachusetts??the biggest cocaine distribution center above the Mason-Dixon line.
Did the kid die for getting too close to the truth . . . or to a sweet lady with a jealous husband?
Spenser will stop at nothing to find out.
Praise for Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels
??Like Philip Marlowe, Spenser is a man of honor in a dishonorable world. When he says he will do something, it is done. The dialogues zings, and there is plenty of action . . . but it is the moral element that sets them above most detective fiction.???Newsweek
??Crackling dialogue, plenty of action and expert writing . . . Unexpectedly literate??[Spenser is] in many respects the very exemplar of the species.???The New York Times
 
??They just don??t make private eyes tougher or funnier.???People
 
??Parker has a recorder??s ear for dialogue, an agile wit . . . and, strangely enough, a soupçon of compassion hidden under that sardonic, flip exterior.???Los Angeles Times
 
??A deft storyteller, a master of pace.???The Philadelphia Inquirer
 
??Spenser probably had more to do with changing the private eye from a coffin-chaser to a full-bodied human being than any other detective hero.???The Chicago Sun-Times
 
??[Spenser is] to
… (more)
Member:MindyKlasky
Title:Pale Kings And Princes, a Spenser Novel
Authors:Robert B. Parker
Info:Delacorte Press (1987), Hardcover
Collections:Your library
Rating:
Tags:mystery, first edition

Work Information

Pale Kings and Princes by Robert B. Parker (1987)

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» See also 42 mentions

English (14)  German (1)  All languages (15)
Showing 1-5 of 14 (next | show all)
First edition very fine
  dgmathis | Mar 16, 2023 |
A quick read, especially in large print (cataracts). I always say some people can't write a bad book and Robert B Parker definitely falls in that category. ( )
  bjkelley | Jun 13, 2022 |
The usual characters, Spenser, Susan, Hawk ect in a Massachusetts mill town which has become the cocaine capital of New England. Spenser is hired to find who killed a reporter who was looking into the cocaine trade. The client was the newspaper editor who sent the reporter. Spenser finds more than the editor was hoping for including corrupt police and several murders that happen in the wake of his investigation. Not really too many surprises in this one, but plenty of violence. ( )
  MMc009 | Jan 30, 2022 |
There are just some things you know you can count on. You know your driver’s license photo will make you look like an axe-murderer. You know a dropped piece of toast will land jelly-side down. And you know that a Robert B. Parker Spenser novel will give you a solid read.

‘Pale Kings and Princes’ is no different. Sent off to a small Massachusetts town to investigate the murder of a young reporter, Spenser quickly finds himself up to his neck in cocaine dealers, crooked cops, and people who aren’t quite telling the truth. How he gets past the not quite part and deals out his own particular kind of justice forms the backbone of the story. The usual cast of characters is on hand, the usual wry dialogue is spoken, and satisfaction happens all around. ( )
  LyndaInOregon | Jan 26, 2021 |
The first couple of pages of this book irritated me with their conformance to so many hard-boiled detective cliches. Then I read the other 295p in two sessions - and I wish it had been only one, because the break came just before the denouement and it lost a bit of tension because of that. Not the author's fault, rather the tyrany of clocks combined with my ridiculous (lack of) sleep rhythm.

Apparently this is the bajillionth book in the series of novels about Spenser, former cop, PI with a Code of Honour. There are approximately another bajillion that come after it, too. It's a genuine 'friller, page-turning, not easily predictable. It's also not quite as cliched as it appears (in the first two pages). Spenser isn't a womaniser, for instance. He is also humanised and raised "above the streets" not so much by hints of intellectual depth (e.g. Marlowe's chess games and Joe Kurtz' reading list) as by the peeks behind his mask. The hard-boiled detective is a persona - Spenser uses it because it is expected of him and because it offers emotional protection. Also, Spenser does not really have a Code of Honour, after all. Instead he just has a sensse of right and wrong that isn't necessarily rigid or overly informed by the concept of duty - nothing about it seems codified at all, in fact.

So initially Spenser is a lone gunman going up against a corrupt town, single-handed. It could have gone into A Fistful of Dollars territory but actually never strayed a step in that direction and by the end Spenser had put together such a regular little Scooby Gang that I was half surprised that a Slayer, a werewolf, a vacuum-head, a brainy girl and a wise-cracking side-kick didn't show up. Or a brainy girl, a vacuum-head, a jock, a coward and his cowardly mutt...

Anyroad, this was such fun amusement that I would happily read more from Parker, but I have heard rumours that the latter part of the series shows a decline in quality. Maybe I shall try to hunt up the first one. Perhaps I should hire a PI to do it for me, but I think the trail of corpses might make me feel both scared and possibly guilty. Spenser wouldn't feel the former of those two; maybe the latter. ( )
  Arbieroo | Jul 17, 2020 |
Showing 1-5 of 14 (next | show all)
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Epigraph
"I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cried---'La belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall.' "
John Keats, from "La Belle Dame sans Merci"
Dedication
as always for Joan, and Dan, and Dave, and this time too, for Kathy
First words
The sun that brief December day shone weakly through the west-facing window of Garrett Kingsley's office.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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Wikipedia in English (2)

Fiction. Mystery. Thriller. HTML:??Ebullient entertainment.???Time
A hotshot reporter is dead. He'd gone to take a look-see at ??Miami North???little Wheaton, Massachusetts??the biggest cocaine distribution center above the Mason-Dixon line.
Did the kid die for getting too close to the truth . . . or to a sweet lady with a jealous husband?
Spenser will stop at nothing to find out.
Praise for Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels
??Like Philip Marlowe, Spenser is a man of honor in a dishonorable world. When he says he will do something, it is done. The dialogues zings, and there is plenty of action . . . but it is the moral element that sets them above most detective fiction.???Newsweek
??Crackling dialogue, plenty of action and expert writing . . . Unexpectedly literate??[Spenser is] in many respects the very exemplar of the species.???The New York Times
 
??They just don??t make private eyes tougher or funnier.???People
 
??Parker has a recorder??s ear for dialogue, an agile wit . . . and, strangely enough, a soupçon of compassion hidden under that sardonic, flip exterior.???Los Angeles Times
 
??A deft storyteller, a master of pace.???The Philadelphia Inquirer
 
??Spenser probably had more to do with changing the private eye from a coffin-chaser to a full-bodied human being than any other detective hero.???The Chicago Sun-Times
 
??[Spenser is] to

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Book description
In this crime story, the Boston private eye Spenser is hired to determine whether a reporter was killed by dope dealers or by an irate husband.
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