A Symphony Comprises its Notes; the Notes Compose the Symphony... and Michael Brandman is Deaf

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From the Salem Evening News (MA, USA) Police blotter


Ongoing theft is suspected by a woman who told police at 11:24 a.m. that her "night cream is being used up faster than it should be."


By the end of the week, a woman on Pope Street runs out of her medication, leading her to believe that someone is breaking into her apartment and stealing the pills, a few at a time, according to the log at 10:45 p.m. Police are investigating.


Those 2 women should save some money and hire both the same lawyer and the same psychiatrist


A woman claimed innocence at 2:45 a.m. after the landlord complained that she was deliberately disturbing the peace. She told officers she only woke when she heard them knock. But as officers walked down three flights of stairs, they heard her "jumping up and down in her apartment to disturb her landlord/neighbor on floor 2," according to the log. Police went back, telling her to stop.




Breanna Cornell, 23, of 539 Cabot St., Beverly, was arrested at the police station at 5:26 a.m. by Officer Joseph DiBernardo on a charge of malicious destruction of property. Taken into protective custody earlier, Cornell allegedly attacked a toilet, causing it to overflow and creating major damage.


Those 2 women, too.

Perhaps my favorite writer of fiction in the last 40 years was Robert B. Parker. He is not to be confused with the other Robert Parker, the oenophile, although he has not been without influence, either. RBP was responsible for more than 50 books in his lifetime; he vacated this mortal coil while seated at his writing table, last year. 


Parker is best known for his Spenser series of detective novels set in greater Boston. And well he should be. He also wrote a book with his wife recounting her breast cancer diagnosis. He's done cowboy novels, a how-to-guide on weight training, young-adult fiction and two other crime novel series. One of them has been made into a collection of made-for-TV-movies starring Tom Selleck. Jesse Stone is the character's name. He is the police chief in the fictionalized version of my home town. It appears that Parker's family and others in the free-food line did not want Jesse Stone to die with his creator. Commissioned to write the first posthumous Jesse Stone story was one Michael Brandman. From Amazon.ca, here is what qualified Brandman to pick up Parker's shield.


"Michael Brandman is an award-winning producer of more than thirty motion pictures; he collaborated with Robert B. Parker on more than a dozen of them, giving him a the ability to carry on the “Jesse Stone” series."


Other than the effective use of a semi-colon, that credential gave me the willies. "What, Michelangelo is dead? But there's another chapel to be painted. I know, we'll get Larry, his brother Darrell and his other brother Darrell. We'll put Mickey's name above theirs."


The book is what you might expect. Brandman, or his editor, whom he briefly slobbers over on his acknowledgments, hits the simple high notes of Parker's style often. But the subtleties, the conflict both external and internal, knowing his way around his environs (Boston's north side and the Old Harbor?) seem out of his reach. That's TV, though isn't it? The dialogue, for which Parker was revered, smells as if it were traced and not written. Every problem known to man in the 21st century is faced and solved. The ending is silly. The anti-climax is there because somebody said it should be. Brandman's limited investment ends with the violent denouement, two chapters before the story is euthanized. 


In the cluster of consumer reviews on Amazon a reader states that the writing


"feels like a high school junior read some of Parker's novels and thought he'd take a crack for a school project..."


That's grade 11, for those of you here in Canada. As a person who has taught high school English I feel that's a generous description.


I am sorry that Joan, Daniel, and David Parker chose Brandman, though his name says it all: the brand lives on, but the package is empty. Unless the real function of the book is a cynical screenplay-in-waiting...


Here's some irony for you. In my two novels I have made a conscious effort, struggled is more accurate, not to sound like Bob Parker. I am afraid that in those stories there are times when I sound more like Parker than Brandman ever does. Perhaps he needs to find his own ceiling to paint. I'll wager he won't.