Cold Service (Spenser Mysteries)

We learn a bit more about Hawk in this terrific episode in the Spenser series. When Hawk is shot in the back by Ukrainian mobsters while providing bodyguard services to a bookie, he vows revenge once he is healed. He also wants to provide for the remaining child of the family who was killed. Things turn complicated when it becomes obvious that there is more at play here than just the Ukrainians trying to move into town - there seems to be connections to both Tony Marcus and Boots Podolak, who is the mayer and essentially owner of Marshport. Hawk vows to take down the entire Marshport operation and to help, he has Spenser bring in the Gray Man - last seen almost succeeding in killing Spenser. I truly enjoyed learning a bit more about Hawk and seeing his more vulnerable side. I was disappointed - as was probably about everyone - in Cecile; at the same time, I am interested in how things will go with the Gillespie boy - hopefully we will hear about him from time to time. This is definitely not a book to be missed by Spenser fan!

Parker just keeps getting better and better. The book is full of action, power, humor, and thought, even including a masterfully crafted allusion to Bruegel. The meeting of Hawk and Tony Marcus on the footbridge in the Public Gardens is immensely powerful and perfectly done. What is Parker to do? Although they are as mighty as myths, Spenser and Hawk are strongly realistic, so their dealings move along with the times: how many Ukrainian immigrants were there in Boston twenty years ago? But our heroes are getting along in years. Ideally their personas stay at about 40, like Dagwood and Blondie. But they would be in their late 50s at least by now, so in that light, their relations with women and their methods of dealing with problems are becoming like caricatures. Even Ty Bop has already lived longer than his like statistically do. We still want Spenser and Hawk books to read. Freeze them at this age and keep writing, is what I hope Parker will do. This is one of the best mysteries I have read. My only disappointment was that the obnoxious son-in-law didn't get his comeuppance.

In this Spenser novel, Hawk's almost the main character. The book opens with Spenser visiting Hawk in his hospital room: he's been shot in the back three times. Hawk was hired to protect a bookmaker, and in the absence of Hawk, the man was killed, along with his wife and 2 of his 3 children. Hawk is one of those guys who populate Spenser novels: you don't shoot him in the back, kill the guy he's working for, and then leave him alive. Not if you want to live yourself. This is the usual Spenser novel, with a few more twists and turns of plot than usual, but nevertheless pretty routine as far as Parker goes. An unusual turn occurs when the Gray Man (who almost killed Spenser a few books ago) makes a reappearance, and has a turn in the plot himself. The whole thing has a rather amusing patter to it, and is very satisfying. Highly recommended.

My review title is the epigram which introduces this outstanding novel by Robert Parker and which together with the book jacket illustration summarizes the storyline. However, despite the fact that this thirty-second entry in Robert Parker's Spenser series is as usual told in the first person with Spenser as the narrator, Hawk's and Spenser's usual roles are reversed. In fact, Spenser begins the story with the words "It started without me". With Spenser, we then learn from Hawk, tethered to an IV line and constantly monitored by the staff at the hospital where he is recovering, that he was shot "three times in the back with a big rifle [by a] good shooter [who} grouped all three shots between [the} shoulder blades [but luckily] missed the spine, missed the heart " and thus left Hawk to recover and seek revenge. Hawk had been hired by a bookie, Luther Gillespie, to protect him after he had been threatened by the Ukranian mob trying to take over his book. Hawk has learned that after he went down they killed Luther, his wife, and two oldest kids, sparing only the youngest son who was in day care and now will be raised by his grandmother. Thus, Hawk knows that after a long and difficult recovery, he will need to not only avenge the attack on him and remove any trace of fear and self doubt which would otherwise remain, but more importantly he can most effectively make whatever amends are possible to Luther for failing to protect his family by somehow insuring the future security of Luther's orphaned young son. As Hawk summarizes the situation to Spenser, "I want to know who they are and where they are. And I want to know they did it. Not think it, know it." To Spenser's admonition that Hawk "won't be ready even if we know who and where", Hawk replies "sooner or later, I'll be ready. And I'll know it when I am." And of course the die is set when Spenser replies simply but meaningfully, "and when you are we'll go." This is the quintessential Spenser-Hawk relationship, where the most important things are often left unsaid. The bond between Hawk and Spenser is so strong that as information is painstakingly gathered and the outline of a plan of action develops, Spenser realizes that he may eventually have to chose between betraying his own principles to help Hawk or betraying that lifelong bond with Hawk. As events unfold, Spenser and Susan engage in frequent discussions in which she attempts to provide him both support and insight into the situation in which he has been thrust and the code of honor which guides the plan for retaliation which gradually takes shape. As the plans which will almost certainly result in several additional deaths move toward their inevitable climax, Susan eventually summarizes the situation for Spenser by quoting the writer E. M. Forster, "who said that if he had to choose between betraying his country and betraying his friend, he hoped he'd have the courage to betray his country". The conversation that follows is the culmin

This might be the sequel to Small Vices. Here Hawk, the Spenser running mate for . . . . is it thirty years(?), takes three in the back while acting as a bodyguard. The result is extreme physical and psychic trauma. 'Nothing like being shot at and missed' said Churchill, but here of course the shooter didn't miss. While the quips, the jokes about manhood, the comments about race, the seething sexuality as well as resolve that is Hawk never ends, we do get a glimpse of why Hawk is Hawk, what he paid to become Hawk, and how anything else is less. The flirtation with mortality that Spenser underwent in Small Vices is also present but Parker presents it a little differently and in a manner that Hawk would not object to. And Susan, who showed a lot of hutzpah in Melancholy Baby, also plays a more substantial role here as well. Just don't expect her to start packing. I do find that dog tedious. But it's well worth the battle that Spenser is faced with, unqualified loyalty to the only person he loves after Susan and his own code which will be if not violated then tainted if Hawk has his way to take out the Ukranian Mob from bottom to top. We love Spenser because he can bloody the nose and crack the ribs of the foulest of humans, all the while quoting Sydney Carton's lines from The Tale of Two Cities. At first (Godwulf, Ceremony, A Savage Place, Rachel) it seemed like a gimmick but then I along with a million other Parker fans knew that this was what Spenser really was, a self educated patriot for the soul who would do the right thing or the next right thing, asking no quarter and giving none. He is one of George Orwell's 'hard men.' Spenser has a code. So does Hawk. They're just a little different. That's the story of Cold Service. Good stuff. Neither Spenser nor Parker ever disappoints. 5 stars. Thanks Mr. Parker, for keeping it going and never maling it in. Larry Scantlebury