All Our Yesterdays
Spenser doesn't appear in this overwrought, Boston-set saga of three generations of Irish-American cops, but the spirit of Parker's popular PI dominates these pages nonetheless, with each cop in turn obsessed with courage, codes of behavior and, especially, A Woman. These are the themes of Parker's other non-Spenser novels as well, particularly Love and Glory, but here they're explored in a tale whose scaffolding of parallels and coincidences suspends disbelief as poorly as do the characters' operatic passions. The Sheridan patriarch, Conn, for example, having been betrayed in Ireland during "the troubles" by the love of his life, one Hadley Winslow, moves to the U.S. with a heart of stone: "It was so hard to stop caring about her," he tells a fellow cop, "that I had to stop caring about everything." That is, until Conn catches the case of a young girl found slain and molested, discovers that Hadley's son is the culprit and uses that information to blackmail Hadley into a longterm sexual liaison in exchange for burying the proof against her son. If ever a set of characters needed Prozac it's these Sheridans, whose sullen, brutal, unlikely dance with the Winslow women continues until the third-generation Sheridan, with help from his father, breaks the spell after a paroxysm of violence. All this pained macho posturing is shaped by Parker's usual elegant and precise prose, perhaps the cleanest in crimedom; but, finally no turn of phrase is quick enough to keep his somber tale from sinking into fatal self-importance. BOMC and QPB selections; major ad/promo.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.