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About a fifth of the way into his 13th and best mystery novel, Robert B. Parker explicitly acknowledges what he is up to: he seeks to re-create, in contemporary context, the medieval quest. In A Catskill Eagle, his hard-boiled detective, Spenser, vows to rescue a maiden imprisoned in a tower. But the modern world, with its complexities ranging from feminism to the military- industrial complex, has all but nullified the chance for such straightforward valor. The "maiden" is Spenser's estranged girlfriend, Susan Silverman; her supposed captor is Spenser's rival for her love; her disappearance may in fact be voluntary; her guards are also employees of an unscrupulous international arms dealer; the macho Spenser must rely on help from a lesbian journalist and a matronly psychotherapist; and the perilous rescue turns into a wantonly bloody and ignoble business, achieved with the connivance of morally dubious U.S. Government agencies.
Parker allows Spenser full awareness of these conundrums without turning the man of action into an egghead, and brings off the baroque and potentially murky tale with characteristic clarity, humor and excitement.
SKELETON CREW
by Stephen King
Putnam; 512 pages; $18.95
Anyone who announces the arrival of another book by Stephen King should speak quickly and get out of the way. King's loyal and extensive readership will stampede toward the author's work, even when, as is the case with the recent best-selling novel Thinner, it is offered under a pseudonym. Nothing whatever in Skeleton Crew, a collection of 22 stories written over the past 19 years, will disappoint his presold constituents.
If King's formula were as easy to imitate as it is to describe, all writers might be millionaires. Yet he is the prevailing master in the horror-lit racket because his work hardly ever seems calculated or artificial. The Mist begins: "This is what happened. On the night that the worst heat wave in northern New England history finally broke--the night of July 19--the entire western Maine region was lashed with the most vicious thunderstorms I have ever seen." The novella-length story is an exercise in escalating gruesomeness, and the urgency and awkwardness of the narrative lend credence to the preposterous. So does the setting, a supermarket where a random bunch of shoppers have been trapped by what may be the end of the world. Familiar brand names anchor the incredible; a flying monster invades the store and is set on fire by the beleaguered defenders, finally crashing "into the spaghetti sauces, splattering Ragu and Prince and Prima Salsa everywhere like gouts of blood." King's private lines to primal nightmares and American consumerism remain in good working order.
MAILER: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
by Peter Manso
Simon & Schuster; 720 pages; $19.95