Crossover Cover: Stardust

 

Are you a fan of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels?

Then you'll love this Spenser novel by Robert B. Parker which features a fictional locale from the Marlowe novel Playback!

For more intel, check out my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, which is to be published by Meteor House! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover Cover: Getting Up with Fleas

Devlin “Trace” Tracy is hired by his former employer at an insurance company to protect a freewheeling actor on the set of his latest film. Trace’s office is above Bogie’s Restaurant, which is frequented by mystery writers and other P.I.s; Trace says, “Now, Bogie’s is getting out-of-town trade too. Only about a week before, there was this private detective from Boston who stopped in. He had a quiche cookbook under one arm and he ordered some kind of Yugoslavian beer and got drunk after two sips and then wanted to talk to the bartender about the meaning of courage.” Detectives Ed Razoni and “Tough” Jackson investigate the hit-and-run murder of a man mistaken for the actor due to the star giving him his jacket. The Boston private detective is Robert B. Parker’s Spenser, though Trace is probably exaggerating his behavior somewhat. Murphy wrote a series of novels about Detectives Razoni and Jackson in 1973-1974. Trace first met the duo in Too Old a Cat, which I covered in a previous post.

Crossover Cover: Playmates

In this novel, Spenser investigates a case at Taft University in Walford, Massachusetts, where his girlfriend Dr. Susan Silverman teaches. Taft first appeared in Parker's non-series novel Love and Glory, and would be mentioned in several later Spenser novels, as well as the Sunny Randall novel Blue Screen, the Jesse Stone novel Stranger in Paradise, and another non-series novel, The Boxer and the Spy.

Crossover Covers: Kennedy for the Defense

In this book by George V. Higgins, the first of four featuring sleazy Boston-based lawyer Jerry Kennedy, Kennedy tells his wife that he cannot bring in P.I. "Bad-Eye" Mulvey on the case he is working, and adds, “Cooper uses a guy named Spenser and says he’s pretty good, but Spenser’s one of those fresh bastards that thinks he’s the sword of justice and goes running off to London every chance he gets, like he was trying out for his own television series.” This is clearly a reference to Robert B. Parker's P.I. Spenser, and brings Kennedy into the Crossover Universe. I've already written this one up. At least a few of Higgins' other novels are connected to the Kennedy books. Federal Agent Pete Riordan, a minor character in Kennedy for the Defense, reappears in The Patriot Game, which also features the title character of Higgins' earlier novel The Digger's Game and his brother. A review on Goodreads says that other characters from previous books appear, but sadly doesn't give specifics, so I'll have to research that on my own. According to Wikipedia, the books Trust, Outlaws, and Bomber's Law also take place in the same continuity as the Jerry Kennedy series, but again details are not given. One of the characters in Trust, Ed Cobb, reappears in Victories. Finally, Impostors refers to both Jerry Kennedy and "Bad-Eye" Mulvey. Therefore, I will be reading all of the aforementioned books and including them in the new volumes.