Bad Business (Spenser)

This is the first Robert B. Parker novel I have read and I throughly enjoyed it. The main character is a private detective who is both intelligent and resourceful but has a pleasantly sarcastic/cheeky side. Parkers ability to tell a story without making it too detail-saturated and drawn out made for an enjoyable reading experience. I plan on picking up some more of his work and urge you to do the same.

This is classic Robert Parker novel, at his best. The dialogue cracks with wit, wisdom and humor. The banter and the quips that shoot back and forth are great!! The wonderful characters are all back, taking on another investigative job where things are not what they are portrayed to be. When Robert Spenser, a private detective accepts a simple job from a crying woman, nothing tips him that he is dealing with a rat's nest of deceit and deception that soon reveals itself, piece by piece. Spenser depends on his long time love, Susan, to help him understand the inner workings of the minds involved. His friend and compadre, Hawk, works with him protecting clients and informants. They all work together, observing and asking the right questions as one clue after another reveals new information that things are not quite what they appear. This is a modern, yet classic detective novel, in the same enjoyable style of Chandler and Hammett!!

A convoluted soap-opera gone deadly. I never knew that Spenser would accept an assignment as mundane as following a cheating husband. But the consequences are fatal, creating one of Parker's more enjoyable mysteries. Good reading.

With sharply-drawn characterizations like McCrae's uses in his "Bark of the Dogwood," and a fast pace and plot worthy of Grisham, "Bad Business" can't help but succeed. There's enough twists and turns in this page turner for several books, and frankly, at times, it was a little overwhelming. I thoroughly loved this Parker novel and will await many more. Bravo!

Good Spenser. This probably is a sufficient enough review. But the reason, I think, that we love him and all of his smugness and predictability and relentless search for truth and Ms. Silverman is just that, it is good, it is fair, and like the old John Wayne movies, it's big. Maybe bigger than life.We get older and we don't have heroes anymore. Politicians? Seems kind of silly, doesn't it? Professional athletes get indicted by the Federal Courts, ex-sports icons shoot people.There are judicial inquiries into drugs, sex, violence, and betting. Movie stars get up and tell us about the war. We're down to beer commercials.And then there's Spenser. Solid. Available. Proposing, then disposing. There's a funny scene here where the sexual predator Adele is discussing with Susan how odd it is to see the relationship between Hawk and Spenser and Vinnie. Susan says 'there are more of them,' and then names Belson, Quirk, Chollo, Fortunato, Farrell, Teddy Sapp, Bobby Horse, Healy."Then pretty Adele asks what may be the perfect question and answer to all of us who have followed Spenser for thirty years. Adele says asking of Susan, how Susan knows Hawk will be at a certain dangerous place in the next few hours, and Susan says, "because he said so."There's still another reason why we follow him around decade after decade and it's the lyrical quality of Parker's prose. Early on in a sober moment Spenser is talking to Susan in Kennebunkport, Maine. While she talks he looks out at the shoreline, then the water. You can see him there, with his soulmate, listening but nonetheless taking it all in. He thinks "The movement of the immediate water dragged me outward toward a bigger and bigger seascape until I felt the near eternal presence of the ocean far past the horizen."That's it for me. He never lets me down. 5 stars. Larry Scantlebury