Chasing the Bear: A Young Spenser Novel (Spenser #36.5) by Robert B. Parker


I enjoyed it but would a young adult who has never heard of the Spenser books?

Published in 2009.

I've read just about everything Robert B. Parker has written. I'm a huge fan of the Spenser series and I really did enjoy Chasing the Bear: A Young Spenser Novel, a look at the frequently alluded to but never before fleshed out childhood of Spenser in "West Flub-dub", somewhere out west.

Fans of the series will enjoy it. It consists of Spenser and Susan talking about Spenser's childhood (with plenty of psycho-analysis thrown in) interspersed with flashbacks to Spenser as a young man in a series of "coming-of-age" stories).

Will Young Adult (YA) readers care? The weakness of the book for YA's is the modern talk between Spenser and Susan. New readers will wonder who they are and not get the references to Spenser's hyper-developed sense of self - Parker spent years developing these characters. The regular reader will have no problem with these conversations, but people who are new to the series may not know what they are referring to in most of the conversations. Of course, the flashback format is precisely what makes the book work for frequent readers of the Spenser series.

Bottom line:

Spenser fans should read this one. New readers will probably be confused.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Chasing the Bear: A Young Spenser Novel by Robert B. Parker.

 Reviewed on September 23, 2009.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts over the last 30 days

Christianity's Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution - A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First by Alister McGrath

Image
Strong, but not for those who are not well-versed in history   Originally published in 2007. Let me just note that Alister McGrath has taken on a large topic (Protestantism) in Christianity's Dangerous Idea and done about as well as one can in organizing the information and presenting it in a cogent and readable fashion. McGrath assumes that you already know a lot about history in general and about the last 500 years or so in particular. That is to be expected. If he had to explain every last detail this book it would have to have been 3,000 pages rather than the already hefty 478 pages of text plus 50+ pages of endnotes. If you are a person that has heard of the Huguenots, but are not sure if they are a native group in South Africa or a religious group in France, this book is not for you. This is not a complete history, either. It is an overview. If you are looking for a complete history of a particular denomination, you are likely to be disappointed. Some denom...
Read more

THIS BOOK WON'T BURN (audiobook) by Samira Ahmed

Image
Published by Little, Brown Young Readers in 2024. Read by Kauser Mohammed. Duration: 10 hours, 34 minutes. Unabridged. Book summary Noor Khan is a senior in high school and she is devastated. Her father walked out on her family and moved back to his native England. He gave no warning and the family is reeling. Noor's mother decides that a change of location would be best. Noor, her little sister (a freshman), and her mom move from their diverse upper middle class Chicago neighborhood to a downstate Illinois small town so that her mom can work at a small college.  Noor hates it. She misses her friends and the vibrancy of Chicago. She also feels like an oddity because she is Indian and Muslim in a school that is very white and very Christian.  She determines to gut out this one last semester of high school and then head back to Chicago to go to college. She decides she doesn't need friends or even to enjoy this small town - she just needs to get in, get the diploma and then get ...
Read more

DRAGONS of WINTER NIGHT: DRAGONLANCE CHRONICLES, BOOK TWO (audiobook) by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Image
Originally published in book form in 1985. Audiobook published by Audible Studios in 2013. Read by Paul Boehmer. Duration: 17 hours, 52 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: The war against the Dragon Queen continues. The forces of good pulled off a major victory at the end of the last novel, but now the forces of evil are looking for revenge.  Tanis, Flint, Goldmoon, Laurana, and the rest of the intrepid companions head off in search of new ways to fight the Dragon Queen's advancing armies. Or, if that fails - lead a refugee exodus. They use an ancient map from before the Cataclysm to find a legendary seaport only to find that it is no longer anywhere near the sea due to the immense destruction of the Cataclysm. As the companions try to figure out their next steps, an armada of dragons attacks the city, breathing flames from above. Dragon Army ground troops swarm into the city and the companions are split into two groups while Tanis faces the decision of a lifetime. My Review: This is a ...
Read more

THE PROVING GROUND (Lincoln Lawyer #8) (audiobook) by Michael Connelly

Image
Published in 2025 by Little, Brown and Company. Read by Peter Giles. Duration: 10 hours, 50 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis The Lincoln Lawyer returns for another case in The Proving Ground . Mickey Haller has moved away from defense work to civil litigation. In this case, an AI program designed to be a friend substitute to young adults and teens told a teenage boy to get rid of his girlfriend in a way that could easily be interpreted as killing her. So, he took his father's unsecured pistol and shot her in the high school parking lot. Haller is suing the company for marketing a faulty product towards teens. He is pretty sure he has the goods - bad programming and an unethical marketing team that is more concerned about demonstrating the potential of the AI so the company can be absorbed by a bigger company with deep pockets. They wanted the payoff rather than making it safe. But, as Haller and his team start to dig, they find they are out of their depth. Tech writer Jack McEvoy come...
Read more

BRAVE COMPANIONS: PORTRAITS in HISTORY (audiobook) by David MCCullough

Image
Originally published in hardback book form in 1991. Published by Simon and Schuster Audio. Read by the author, David McCullough Duration: 11 hours, 19 minutes Unabridged Brave Companions: Portraits in History  is a collection of previously published articles and speeches. It's a smattering of this and that - sometimes it's about art, sometimes about scientists, sometimes about politicians and sometimes it's just some musings from McCullough about history. It doesn't matter, almost all of it is interesting and well-told. McCullough understands the value of telling history as a story - as always he is very approachable. My favorite entry was the story of the railroad that preceded the Panama Canal. It was an amazing story of the power of human will against nature. McCullough reads this audiobook, which is great because McCullough has a fantastic speaking voice and is well known for his voice work. I envy both his writing ability and his talents as a speaker. My fav...
Read more

THE HIGHWAY (Cody Hoyt #2, Cassie Dewell #2) (audiobook) by C.J. Box

Image
Published by Macmillan Audio in 2013 Read by Holter Graham Duration: 9 hours, 53 minutes Unabridged If you are a big fan of the TV show Criminal Minds  or the movie The Silence of the Lambs  you will probably enjoy this book quite a bit. For me, the fascination of getting into the head of a serial killer has long since passed and I end up feeling soiled and abused after every excursion into this area. But, I read The Highway because I do enjoy C.J. Box's work quite a bit and I grudgingly like his Cody Hoyt character - he is exasperating and full of gigantic character flaws but just when you have had enough of him he pulls himself together and he gets the job done. In a bit of a reach (actually, in a real big reach) the young female characters from his book Back of Beyond  are caught up in another dangerous situation and Cody Hoyt is called out to rescue them once again. This time they have a run-in with a long haul trucker that kills himself the Lizard King. T...
Read more

JAILBIRD by Kurt Vonnegut

Image
Originally published in 1979. Synopsis Jailbird is the fictional story of William F. Starbuck, the least important member of the Watergate conspiracy to go to prison.  The story begins with the day that Starbuck is released from a makeshift federal prison (and very cushy, for a prison) on a Georgia military base. He has no idea what he is going to do and he doesn't have a lot of money, but he figures that he will be okay - after all, he has a degree from Harvard and he learned how to be a bartender in a correspondence class while he was in prison. What follows is a wild tale of good and bad coincidences that take Starbuck to a broken-down residential motel in New York City. Like the hotel, Starbuck is a broken man in many ways - he is an ex-con, his wife of many years has passed away, he never speaks to his son, and he feels shame for accidentally ruining the career of one of his friends due to an offhand comment he made during a anti-Communist Congressional hearing lead by then-C...
Read more

THE 1619 PROJECT: A NEW ORIGIN STORY by Nikole Hannah-Jones and others.

Image
  Published in November of 2021 by Random House Audio. Multicast Performance Duration: 18 hours, 57 minutes. Unabridged. I have developed a new hobby as of late - I read books that politicians tell people they should not read. The former governor of Indiana (and later the President of Purdue University) tried to prohibit Indiana University (or anyone else) to use a well-known history book to teach anyone anywhere. I read it. The Lt. Governor of Texas cancelled a book reading about the Alamo because it was not a hero worship book. There's a politician in Texas that  posted a list of 850 books  that he wants to ban across the state that has provided a lot of potential reading.  But, in the last couple of years nothing, absolutely nothing, has compared to the  1619 Project and the controversy it has generated. If you have not heard of the original 1619 Project , you have not been paying attention to America's culture wars. President Trump hated it so much he...
Read more

BEHIND the BLUE and GRAY: THE SOLDIER'S LIFE in the CIVIL WAR by Delia Ray

Image
Published in 1991 by Scholastic. 93 pages of text.  9 pages of a bibliography, a glossary, an index and picture credits. Behind the Blue and Gray is a simple introduction to what the average Civil War soldier. I would recommend it for grades 5 and above. However, saying it is for those grades does not mean an adult interested in starting to study the Civil War would not find this book interesting. It is similar to the introductory books that are published by the National Parks that you can find at Civil War battlefields. The book follows the progress of a few Civil War soldiers as they enroll in their respective armies, set up camps, train, march and eventually fight. It also explores what happened to prisoners and the injured. At the end, it discussed the aftermath of the war and ends with a photo of elderly former Union and Confederate soldiers at a reunion gathering. There is not a lot about women in the war as a topic, but there are a few pages about Native Americans a...
Read more

DOCTOR WHO: DESTINY of the DOCTOR #3: VENGEANCE of the STONES (audiobook) by Andrew Smith

Image
Published in 2013 by AudioGo (Blackstone/BBC)   Read by Richard Franklin and Trevor Littledale Duration: 1 hour Unabridged. As a part of the 50th Anniversary celebration of Doctor Who, the BBC released a series of audiobooks called Destiny of the Doctor . Each of the Doctors has a 1 hour audiobook story. In Vengeance of the Stones  the Doctor and UNIT are called in to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a RAF fighter jet from the skies above Scotland. While the Doctor is poking around he encounters Lt. Mike Yates for the first time (who becomes Captain Mike Yates and a companion in the television series).  The Doctor soon discovers that the disappearance of the jet is the work of an alien species that has a ancient grudge against humanity and that they are the reason for the prevalence of so many recumbent stone circles in this area.  A recumbent stone circle in Scotland. Photo by Bill McKelvie Also, he discovers that these aliens are more t...
Read more