{"id":1449,"date":"2007-04-14T00:59:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-14T04:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=1449"},"modified":"2007-04-14T00:59:00","modified_gmt":"2007-04-14T04:59:00","slug":"hundred-dollar-baby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=1449","title":{"rendered":"Hundred-Dollar Baby"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"justify\"><a href=\"http:\/\/bp3.blogger.com\/_aatuWUTj6ic\/RiDAHgBLPMI\/AAAAAAAAAZo\/RSNa2i2h3ys\/s1600-h\/z041307hundreddollarbaby.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5053250016996179138\" style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center;\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/bp3.blogger.com\/_aatuWUTj6ic\/RiDAHgBLPMI\/AAAAAAAAAZo\/RSNa2i2h3ys\/s400\/z041307hundreddollarbaby.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><span style=\"font-family:arial;\"><strong>Robert B. Parker&#8217;s <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0399153764\/102-2591084-8977747?ie=UTF8&#038;tag=craizabls&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;linkCode=xm2&#038;camp=1789&amp;creativeASIN=0399153764\"><span style=\"color: rgb(204, 0, 0);\"><strong>Hundred-Dollar Baby<\/strong><\/span><\/a> is his <strong>34th Spenser novel<\/strong>. A new one comes out every year, and when you&#8217;ve been reading them for as long as I have, each new novel is like<strong> a visit from an old friend<\/strong>. That&#8217;s both good and bad. It&#8217;s good because the <strong>characters have a long history<\/strong> and are <strong>well-defined<\/strong>. It&#8217;s bad because after so many years the reader can anticipate how the story will unfold. With a long-running series like the <strong>Spenser novels<\/strong>, the journey becomes more important than the final destination. Well&#8230; normally that&#8217;s the case.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family:Arial;\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:Arial;\"><strong>Hundred-Dollar Baby<\/strong> breaks that mold. Sure, the story begins like most <strong>Spenser novels<\/strong> when he accepts case for a young woman [who first appeared in two earlier books, <strong>Ceremony<\/strong> (1982) and <strong>Taming a Sea Horse<\/strong> (1986)]. The story moves along in a very predictable fashion until about 3\/4 of the way through when it takes on an unexpected twist. <strong>Hundred-Dollar Baby<\/strong> concludes with one of the most memorable endings of any <strong>Spenser novel<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:Arial;\">If you&#8217;ve never read <strong>Robert B. Parker&#8217;s Spenser<\/strong>, then I&#8217;d suggest that you start with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B000HM5K2E\/102-2591084-8977747?ie=UTF8&#038;tag=craizabls&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;linkCode=xm2&#038;camp=1789&amp;creativeASIN=B000HM5K2E\"><span style=\"color: rgb(204, 0, 0);\"><strong>The Goldwolf Manuscript<\/strong><\/span><\/a> [the first in the series]. If you used to read the <strong>Spenser novels<\/strong>, but drifted away, then <strong>Hundred-Dollar Baby<\/strong> would be a good place to rekindle your friendship.<\/span> <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Robert B. Parker&#8217;s Hundred-Dollar Baby is his 34th Spenser novel. A new one comes out every year, and when you&#8217;ve<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","comments-off"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1449"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19782,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449\/revisions\/19782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}