alisande, you've discovered one of the unfortunate new trends in publishing: the author as a "brand".

A lot of successful popular authors have gone this route long before death. Some are forthcoming about it, some less so. Personally, I'm displeased with the practice and I won't support it. When I learn an author is using ghost writers or so-called "co-authors", I read nothing further of their work. They're welcome to do it, they just lose me as a customer.

I'm with Snidely, in that I don't read books by anyone "stepping in for" the original author of a series. There's just no way anyone can know the inner workings of the mind of the original author and how he/she felt about their characters.

And this leads me to a pet peeve. I really dislike it when the author's name is huge/most prominent on a book cover and the actual title is there almost as an afterthought.

Being a huge fan of Robert Parker, I can tell you the publisher had a small part in selecting the authors to continue the various character series. Joan was very involved in this process until her death in June 2013. I don't recall if I've yet read Ironhorse but will check. There have been quite a few books published after Mr. Parker's passing and they've stayed true to the character history and wit (Spenser and Jesse Stone for sure).

While some author's legacies are continued after their death, many current authors are selling their name and letting other authors write their characters. James Patterson has been doing this for a while.

Ditto to what everyone else said. The authors who step in for the original are always a disappointment. Robert Ludlum is another case that comes to mind. I love Robert Parker. Whenever I walk into a used book store or thrift store I always scan the shelves for his books. Having lived in the Boston area for many years they are especially fun.

I read one book by James Patterson along with a co-author and I was so disappointed that I will never read another book like that again. The ending of the book was a complete surprise and disappointment. It was as if the author didn't know the ending himself until he was writing the last few pages of the book.

I think what they do is write an outline for the book and then turn it over to some unknown author to fill in and flesh out the characters and story line. They put their famous name on it so that it will sell. I do not approve of this practice and I think it is quite deceptive.

I have a real hard time with authors who crank out two or three books every year. I would much rather wait a year or two and read a real good quality book instead of a few mediocre books.

I didn't read the, I think, two westerns by Robert B. Parker, nor the follow-up one you mentioned. However, I have read all of Parker's other books as well as those written by other authors after his death. I think those authors, Ace Atkins and Michael Brandman, have done a very nice job of capturing Parker's style of writing. What they haven't done, at least as of now, is move either character forward. Instead, they've just added what I will call episodes to the characters as those characters existed at the time of Parker's death.

As for the new trend of a living author adding his name and some (or no) amount of collaboration to a series, I withhold judgment until I read the book. One of my favorite storytellers, Clive Cussler, has been doing this for years and, so far, I've enjoyed the collaborational series just as much as the original. I think Cussler writes rather formulaically anyway, so that probably makes it easier to make a collaboration successful.

This post was edited by Fun2BHere on Thu, Feb 27, 14 at 17:21