{"id":617,"date":"2012-01-26T23:10:11","date_gmt":"2012-01-26T23:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/?p=617"},"modified":"2012-01-26T23:10:11","modified_gmt":"2012-01-26T23:10:11","slug":"the-godwulf-manuscript-spenser-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/?p=617","title":{"rendered":"The Godwulf Manuscript (Spenser, #1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\tauthor: Robert B. Parker
\n\t\t\tname: Paul
\n\t\t\taverage rating: 3.82
\n\t\t\tbook published: 1973
\n\t\t\trating: 2
\n\t\t\tread at: 2011\/09\/02
\n\t\t\tdate added: 2011\/09\/03
\n\t\t\tshelves: mystery, novel
\n\t\t\treview:
For the first half of The Godwulf Manuscript, I had a hard time understanding why I was reading the book. I had been recommended the series as being solid detective stories featuring a wise-cracking protagonist and a good example of how to craft snappy dialogue. But for the first 100 pages or so I just couldn’t get a handle on Spenser as a character. His “wit” seemed to be a casual sneer in the direction of everyone he encountered\u2014most of whom he could have gotten to be much more cooperative if he’d not been such a tool right off the bat\u2014and it wasn’t even all that witty to me anyway.<\/p>\n

But then, curiously, Spenser started to grow on me. By about halfway through the book I was appreciating his sense of humor more, and his disregard for the kinds of social convention like assigned parking and not beating puffed-up bullies senseless endeared me a little. Robert B. Parker<\/a> never does a great job at describing Spenser physically so in part I think my inability to connect with him early on was that I couldn’t get much of a mental picture going, but eventually this straightens out.<\/p>\n

A more pointed critique for The Godwulf Manuscript is that, as a mystery, it’s only so-so. There’s an economy of characters problem throughout in that very few individuals (left alive) could possibly be the guilty party meaning the reveal is less whodunnit but why<\/em>dunnit. That’s okay, I suppose, except very early on the mystery stops having anything to do with the titular manuscript and becomes about <spoiler>drugs and a series of murders<\/spoiler>. In fact, I was never terribly clear on what the manuscript had to do with anything at all, other than to conveniently get Spenser involved in something that otherwise would have been a routine police matter. Maybe that’s all it was, but by the end it felt a bit like Fridge Logic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The real question, I suppose, is whether this book made me want to continue reading Mr. Parker’s novels, because by most accounts I’ve seen, the series gets better as it goes along. I guess the highest praise for The Godwulf Manuscript I can muster is that it was interesting enough to put the series on come-back-to status: I haven’t entirely written off Parker as a novelist and Spenser as a character so I can see going back and trying book two at some future point. But, this certainly didn’t have me racing out to see desperately what happens next.<\/p>\n

from Paul's bookshelf: read<\/a> \u2014 September 03, 2011 at 07:38AM<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

author: Robert B. Parker name: Paul average rating: 3.82 book published: 1973 rating: 2 read at: 2011\/09\/02 date added: 2011\/09\/03 shelves: mystery, novel review: For the first half of The Godwulf Manuscript, I had a hard time understanding why I was reading the book. I had been recommended the series as being solid detective stories […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":618,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617\/revisions\/618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}