"Split Image" Is Two Novels In One

 

The late Robert B. Parker was one of America’s greatest mystery writers. He wrote in the tradition of Raymond Chandler, with quirky private eyes, sparkling dialogue and dry humor. In one of his last novels, “Split Image”, Parker pairs up two of his characters, Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone. They are both working on separate cases, as Sunny Randall is solving two murders at once, and Jesse Stone is trying to get a kid out of a weird cult. They both throughout the novel, report to eachother how their cases are going. They also start to see sparks fly, as they are both detectives who have things in common.

As usual, the book is fast paced with short chapters, and tons of dialogue. Parker sometimes had so much dialogue in his books that it shortens the amount of words on the page. This makes the pages fly by faster. Parker writes great sparkling dialogue, with a very dry wit. The mystery almost seems secondary to the characters and dialogue, but there is a mystery. In this case, two mysteries. Something James Patterson does a lot in his books. It can seem at times that Parker had two books that were too short, and threw them together. He saw an opportunity to not only throw these two plots together, but pair up two of his characters as well. 

The only thing that might link up the two mysteries was the weird amount of sex talk in these two cases. The two murders were linked to a pair of married twins who slept around, and the cult case was linked to a coverup of young girls being forced to sleep with the elders of the cult. At times, the sex talk in this novel got to be a bit much. Like too much. However, sometimes mysteries need a lurid detail to make them interesting. Plus, this one was a  romance between Randall and Stone, so I got it to an extent. There was also a subplot about Stone and Randall trying to figure out why their marriages didn’t work, and this is the novel’s connection to the Spencer universe, as Sunny Randall’s therapist is Susan, Spencer’s girlfriend.

All in all, “Split Image” is about what you would expect from a Robert B. Parker novel. Not bad, if a bit forgettable. The mysteries in Parker’s novels always felt secondary to his very good characters, and that’s not a bad thing. Parker was a master at the quirky dialogue and memorable characters, and used the mystery genre as a way to move his formula along.