Trip Books

My regularly scheduled reading is sometimes interrupted by 'Trip Books'. A trip book is a book that you pack in your carry-on for the plane ride, or your bag for a road trip. This book should be fast paced, easy to read, and you should be able to finish it before your trip is complete. Since the family and I were headed to L.A. last weekend I needed to grab a trip book to throw in the bag while packing. After perusing my 'to be read' book stack I settled on God Save The Child, by Robert Parker. Parker is an author that I started reading not too long ago, mainly because I remember Spenser: For Hire fondly. As an author he is amazingly prolific, and his books definitely fit the trip book category. The Spenser character is a private detective in Boston who is standard for the genre: ex-cop, ex-boxer, Vietnam war vet, smart mouthed, has a long term girl friend but doesn't ever get married. As the series moved on he develops a close friendship with a hood named Hawk. The early books are mainly Spenser, with the later books almost always including Hawk.
God Save the Child is one of the earliest Spenser novels, it actually is the book where he meets his long term love interest, Susan Silverman. The story centers around Spenser searching for a missing teenager, who may or may not have been kidnapped. After getting to know the parents Spenser begins to have doubts about the kidnapping aspect, and the rest of the story follows Spenser as he pulls at the strings of the tale to get at the truth. Entertaining, fast paced, lots of action. A great example of a Trip Book.
One aspect of Parker's writing that I enjoy is Spenser's no-nonsense look at life, he calls a spade a spade. I don't know why, but it sure seems like we have trouble doing that today.
My thoughts on Fallen Dragon should be arriving soon...