Double Play

Rating:
Summary: Great book, Parker is on top of his game!
Review: A great book by Robert B. Parker, who's new hero, Burke, is just as gritty as Spenser. This book takes place during the 1940's when baseball is about to integrate with Jackie Robinson. Burke is hired to protect Robinson at any cost. The real greatness in the book is the relationship that Burke and Robinson develop over the course of the story. A really good book and I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Pleasantly Surprised!
Review: I didn't realize this was not the typical Spenser P.I. fare and was initially disappointed. My first thought was to pitch the book and count my losses, however, I had nothing new to read. The mingling of fiction and truth of this tale of Jackie Robinson's foray into the white world of baseball and the ground breaking necessary for others to enter this field proved both enlightening and thought provoking. Parker's wonderful characterization of both Robinson and his bodyguard, Burke, as well as the witty dialog, at which Parker excels, are well worth the price of admission. Kudos to you Mr. Parker for not resting on your laurels as so many other authors have done and continuing to provide your readers with the very best offerings.

Rating:
Summary: Not what I expected, It was better.
Review: I have enjoyed Robert Parker's books over the years, especially the the Spencer series, and when I bought this book I was expecting more of the same. The book is actually a wonderful story that weaves fact and fiction in a fabulouse way. The basic plot surrounds Jackie Robinson breaking the baseball color barrier in 1947 (fact), and the man who is hired to be his body gaurd (fiction), a WWII surivor carrying some heavy baggage. Paker develops great characters along with his typical witty dialog, and does a great job of taking you back to that time period when the races were stricly divided.

Rating:
Summary: I Couldn't Have Done It Without You....
Review: Jackie Robinson and Joseph Burke, two men so different and so alike. Robert B. Parker has written a tough novel of baseball, love, murder, rascism, mayhem and family. Into this melee, as a side story, Bobby, a nine year old from Springfield, Ma., tells his story of life with his mom and dad and his love of the Brooklyn Didgers.

Joseph Burke awakens in pain at the Chelsea Naval Hospital. He is a Marine survivor of Guadacanal. His recovery is slow and difficult. His wife comes to visit him once, and when it is time for him to be discharged, she is no where to be found. He goes to their apartment in Boston, where a note says she has found someone else and has moved on. He regains his strength slowly, builds up his body and readies to leave the apartment for a new life. His Marine buddy, Angelo finds him a job working as a debt collector- with his big brusier body he has no trouble with this job and and moves on to be a bodyguard for a young woman who doesn't care about much which just about matches his attitude. They fall for each other..but trouble enters with the name of Louis. Burke moves on.

It is 1947, Branch Rickey, Brooklyn Dodgers Manager, hires Burke to bodyguard Jackie Robinson. Jackie is breaking the color barrier in baseball and his life is in constant jeopardy. Burke and Robinson form a relationship- Burke keeps Robinson alive and Robinson gives Burke a reason for living. Burke manages to keep Robinson on the straight and narrow and Robinson has a career in baseball that will open the doors for many to follow. Burke finds his love in great trouble and solves the dilemma of time and space. Bobby makes it to Dodger Stadium to see his heroes.

Robert B Parker has written an unusual story of characters wound around the periphery of baseball. Not much is written about baseball, but instead about honor, duty, love and redemption. A tough, gritty time in the 1940's when the war is just about over and baseball is just about to begin. prisrob

Rating:
Summary: Half a Double Play
Review: Robert Parker's creative, fictionalized approach to the problems Jackie Robinson faced when integrating baseball makes for fascinating reading. But the other half of his double play, the personalized reminisces of "Bobby," alias him, growing up and loving girls and baseball, is basically self-agrandizement; the interesting historical observations -- and there are some --could be told within the story in Parker's as-always brilliant narrative. The Robinson character is not quite fleshed out (although it is in no way Hawk while the hero, Burke, is much like Spenser, Parker's long-running detective). No, the details in the story didn't happen but they might have. And the danger and tension surrounding Robinson were very real.
You don't have to be a baseball fan to enjoy this -- but you will lose little skipping the "Bobby" chapters.

Rating:
Summary: Bobby strikes out
Review: There isn't much to this book. Half of it seems to be
"Bobby" Parker's irrelevant autobiography. Then you get about ten baseball box scores, right out of the newspapers. The rest of it purports to tell how Jackie Robinson broke into baseball, but I couldn't believe a word of it. Did gangsters really have shootouts in the grandstand? Not likely! And if they did, it would have taken twenty more years before the game became integrated. Robinson was required to avoid confrontations, not to hire hitmen to watch his back.

Rating:
Summary: At the top of his form
Review: This is Parker on the stretch, away from his favorite characters, away from his Boston setting, plunged into the past. When he's stretched he's at the top of his form and demonstrates his moves on every page.

Most of all, the Jackie Robinson story is a story about a time and the first third of the book is background. Parker does the postwar period masterfully and the interspersed personal chapters are a nice, innovative touch. They've drawn some criticism, unwarranted in my opinion.

The characters are fresh, the plotting and dialogue as economical as the best Parker, the resolution touching. I read it straight through, disrupting all of my prior plans for the day, and not regretting a moment of it.