Robert Parker's Now & Then

After my tremendous summer reading binge, my pleasure reading has tapered off quite a lot. It's amazing that a person can be so busy without even having a job. I still do my best to read books that people have lent to Pocket of Bolts, however. Now & Then was one of those. It was a fun book. Tough good guys manage to figure out and entrap very tough and clever bad guy. In this case: private detective and his psychiatrist girlfriend together with a rotating cast of amusing toughs... versus liar and identity-thief radical lefty intellectual crypto-terrorist.

The dialogue is spare and witty, the plot fast-moving. On the other hand, the "good guy" character development was pretty flat and lazy. Motifs (such as the "long ago adultery" theme) were hit hard and heavy-handedly. Also, everyone was quite cavalier about death. Still, really fun reading. A nice break from all the work!