I
wrote a previous blog about the possible linkages between my wife Elaine’s dog
Jake and Robert B. Parker’s real life and fictional dogs named Pearl. As I found myself trying to remember
when Spenser first met Susan Silverman and when Susan first acquired Pearl, the
availability of a convenient resource made this research project simple. The resource, designed by Elaine during
a bathroom remodel several years ago, is a set of built in bookshelves in an
unusual, but very convenient, setting and the paperback mystery novel
collection I keep in these shelves (see Figure 1). These are the old favorites
I will read again and the various series I have collected because I've enjoyed
them so much.
Figure 1---The bookshelves
Included
in the book collection are mystery novels mostly based in the two states we
have lived in as a couple, California and Massachusetts. There is a complete run of the Spenser
series neatly filed in the lower right section of the shelves, under “P” for
Parker. It took just a few minutes
to skim through the earlier books until I found Susan in God save the Child, in
her early incarnation as a school guidance counsellor, and Pearl, who joined
the series several books later in Pastime. Other series in the shelves set in Boston include Parker's other two
series, featuring Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall, books by Jeremiah Healy (his
John Francis Cuddy series) and Linda Barnes’ Carlotta Carlyle series.