Greg Aase

I'm late to the Robicheaux series, so I thought I would read them in order. Heaven's Prisoners is better than the first book in the series. The plot moves along at a faster pace. But I'm still struggling with the Robicheaux character and his motivations, especially in the first half of the book. He does things that I just don't think make much sense, and then later on he pulls off some kind of solid, subtle detective work or type of solid planning that one would come to expect from this type of character. I appreciate that Robicheaux isn't some type of superhuman (paging Jack Reacher) but it's hard to get a handle on the sense of perspective. Maybe this series picks up. I hope so.

I got into the Spenser series in the 80's - probably the prime time for Parker. He had figured out his (Spenser's) voice, but he wasn't just on auto-pilot (like he was in the later books). This is the first in the series, and it shows. The narrative tries a little too hard to by updated Marlowe, and Spenser is sketched out rather than fully formed. Not a great book but a decent starting point.