Nothing last week I’m afraid. A bit of a domestic, doctor called. (Not for me some will be sorry to hear) Always on a bloody Sunday isn’t it? Still managed to cook a wild pigeon (You’d be wild too, if you were stuck into a hot oven and basted with your own juices) and four of five veg. This week it’s a simple pousin (My spell check doesn’t recognise the word, so I might well have spelled it wrong. Baby chicken I mean) poached in white wine with swede, carrot and onion, plus mashed potato and sprouts (frozen. But Marco Pierre White said they’re best). Read More
Robert B. Parker – an obituary
A few words about Robert B. Parker. Now sadly, the late Robert B. Parker, a Grand Master of American crime writing, and deservedly so. Parker has been writing crime novels for forty years, and produced an eye watering number in that time. I make it sixty four, but that does include a few westerns and one or two on other subjects. I counted that I have over sixty in my collection, not including, I must confess Training With Weights. But more importantly as far as I’m concerned, is that Parker was one of the main reasons I started writing crime novels myself. Of course there are some out there who won’t be thanking him for that. His easy way of writing made me think it would be easy to write myself, but in fact it was, and is, a lot harder to do than I thought. Over the years he pared down his style, chopping out any fat, but after his death I dug out my original copy of God Save The Child, his second novel, published in 1974, and the difference from the Parker of the twenty-first century is incredible.