Hush Money

While TV, in particular Star Trek, has Spock, the mystery genre has Hawk, perhaps the greatest literary creation of all time. In this outing of Boston's top PI, Spenser finds himself being asked to come to the aid of those closest to him. Hawk has a friend whose son is a professor at a big-time university, and it seems that the young man has been jobbed out of tenure. Meanwhile, Susan has a friend who is being stalked by an ex-something-or-another. So everyone's favorite poetry quoting tough guy finds himself on two cases with the hole in the donut as renumeration, and it isn't long before events get quite bizarre. This is a different kind of Spenser romp. The body count is low, but the action is still quite high. I especially liked the fight in the campus office. We learn more about Hawk's difficult and disturbing past, and plus we get to see him in action pretty much throughout the whole story. We also get to see Spenser rampaging his way through a tenure committee, and we also are treated yet again to further glimpses of his devotion to Susan. Throughout, Parker calls up the old-school hard-boiled PI yarn, and the story adheres faithfully to the genre template laid out by the dean of hard-boiled noir, Raymond Chandler. Many meaty themes and issues are tackled here with laser-like precision. Parker manages to juxtapose race, sexuality (mainly homosexuality) and politics in a volatile mix which keeps you turning the pages. In addition, several life lessons are dropped here and there, and the psychological motivations of the characters are always excellent. I actually found myself liking Susan's presence this time around. Though I have nothing against the character, she kind of gets in the way of the central premise of tough guys going after and beating up crooks. Then again, she does add another classy dimension and some refined intellectual texture to each story, and to Spenser. This outing worked really well for me, and I have read it a dozen times at least so far. In fact, it may be the best of the lot. If I were going to write hard-boiled noir with sarcastic wit, this book along with Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye would be my templates.

Robert Parker has grown into a major writer. He began as a modern-day writer of hard-boiled detective novels -- one of the many heirs to the tradition of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Boston as the locale, Hawk as the sidekick, Susan as the confidante and lover -- these recur in title after title. But Parker has, on the whole, not succumbed to repetition: his characters have difficulties, grow, interact. Still, no one would claim that his grip on character is that of Chandler nor his insight into psychology is that of Ross MacDonald. Nor are his plots as intricate as many mysteries, but then hard-boiled detectives always -- Spenser is no exception -- subscribe to the dictum (Saul Bellow's line in another context, in HENDERSON THE RAIN KING) that "truth comes in blows."But HUSH MONEY reinforces what has been a growing realization on the part of Parker's readers: that he has become a master of repartee, or dialogue that is direct, crisp, witty. The joy of a Parker novel has become, in the past eight or nine years, the joy of encountering language that zips and crackles, as crisp and astringent as biting into a stick of cold celery. He is not unlike -- and this will be a strange comparison -- a Jane Austen for our age: his characters speak the lines we ourselves would like to speak, if only we were quick-minded enough and had a deep fund of cool and humor. We can be happy encountering great dialogue, and today only Elmore Leonard writes dialogue that is as much fun as Parker's.So like his other recent work, this novel is a joy to read. Yes, we get tired of the sentimentality of Spenser's perfect lover, Susan -- though re-encountering the interracial friendship between Spenser and Hawk, which never shirks from talking about race but remains intimate nonetheless, is a wonderfully refreshing phenomenon. It is both fun and enriching to see that, in contemporary America, it is possible for whites and blacks to be friends, friends who have no need to tip-toe around the shoals of American racial attitudes. Parker shows us what we as a nation can become -- what we as a nation, on the individual level, so often (and so unacknowledgedly) are.This is not the first time Parker has taken on an academic environment; but in this case he has things exactly right. His is a satiric view of the small-mindedness that often characterizes the academic world, a view which sees the pretentiousness and categorizing that are the dark underside of academe. In this regard, the novel fits nicely with Richard Russo's academic masterpiece, STRAIGHT MAN. So: for wonderful dialogue, a good look at the innards of academic life on a contemporary university campus, and one of the most sparkling friendships in modern fiction, try HUSH MONEY. You won't be disappointed.

I really liked this book. I feel that Spencer is the very model of a modern private investigator. I do have to admit that this is the first Spencer book that I have ever read. And BOY was it great! I feel a bit ashamed to admit that my previous knowledge of Spencer was from the "Spencer For Hire" tv series. This book is better than a dozen reruns of the tv show!

"Hush Money" is one of the best "Spenser" novels in years. Not THE best only because it probably could use a little more violence and gun play. SPOILER: Spenser and Hawk beat up only four people. And they don't even shoot anyone!You think maybe they're getting old? Nah!But seriously, "Hush Money" is Robert Parker at his finest. Spenser is at his wise-cracking, one-liner best and Hawk is; well, he is Hawk. Audacious, inscruptible, redoubtable Hawk. Plus, we get a glimpse into Hawk's early life, before he met Spenser.And as another bonus, near the end, we get to see another side of Susan. I never liked her more. But don't skip to the final pages, it will spoil the fun.If you are a "Spenser" fan, you'll enjoy this book. If, however, you are a politically-correct liberal (or from San Francisco, same thing), you'll probably hate it. As a personal side note, I am a fairly conservative African-American - no Buchanan-lover by any means (pun intended for those who've read the book) but defintely neither liberal nor politically correct - and I can testify to the self-righteous hypocrisy and racism of the liberal White academics to Robinson Nevins. It is almost as if Robert Parker was privy to some of the conversations I've had in academia."Hush Money" is an excellent book; on many levels.