Taming a Sea-Horse

Another Robert B. Parker classic. His Spenser is original, entertaining and always leaves you wanting more. Highly recommend this author for great reading.

Robert B Parker is the greatest author of all time as measured by quality and quantity. Hemingway, Dostoyevski, Faulkner, et. al. wrote 2 or 3 great books, each of which even Mr. Parker would acknowledge superior to any of his works. But no author has ever consistently produced high quality entertainment virtually every year for over 30 years! No one. This book is not his best, but it is a good example of how he can call upon old characters from former books and weave a new tale of humor, suspense and just plain entertainment. Raymond Chandler said his objective was to write mystery novels that readers could enjoy even if the last ten pages were missing. Parker has acheived that objective more than 30 times.

In the 13th in the Spenser series, Patricia Utley - a high class madame with a call girl service in New York City - contacts Spenser because April Kyle - who we first met in Ceremony - has gone missing again. When Spenser begins to look for her, he runs straight into a brick wall of lies and threats that have him running from Maine to St. Thomas looking for clues when the one link he did find - another hooker who had apparently known April - ended up murdered, along with her pimp. The action never lets up and we're treated to a lot of peeks into the world of the professional sex trade. It is frequently not very pretty. A strong entry in the Spenser series. A recommend from me.

I'm ashamed to admit this about my reading weakness. I did overcome it, given full use of the gift of Parker's skill as an author. The confession: The first few paragraphs of TAMING A SEA-HORSE worked more as the wrong end of a magnet than a draw into the story. My immediate, automatic response was I didn't want to immerse my emotions again into the heartbreaking, depressing world of Patricia Utley and April Kyle. And then the save: Reading into the story a couple pages, I was hooked into Spenser's world and cares. I wanted to know why April had gone to the different call agency, and how Spenser might convince her to return to Utley's more realistic, kinder "retirement program." And, the conversation with Utley was engrossing, about the various angles of Call Girls' dreams, the sour and the creme. I was also caught by Spenser's description of compulsions and controls (successes and failures) of his rampant appetites, in this case for martinis over lunch, through lunch, concluding with a healthy cherry cheesecake wallow. Of course Spenser's first conversation with April over a noon lunch, which was breakfast for her, was full of reader bait, as was his first exchange with April's high-brow musician pimp. With Spenser's satiric takes on the seedy sides of NYC ambiance swirled into the mix, I willingly gave up any resistance to sinking into the unique plot mix in book # 13 in the series. Given the sensitive ending (and the increasingly engrossing ride to it, youthful shrugs included) I'm really glad that resistance would have been futile here. Susan and Hawk didn't show up until about half through the plot, but their scenes were prime, especially if a reader has come upon them in sequence, through the storms of the previous novels. A special playful newness to Susan and Spenser's relationship had emerged, and I could feel the subtle pride and quiet warmth in Hawk, which had expanded due to the intense intimacy of soul ripping situations through which they had passed in absolute commitment to each other, in previous novels. Due to the delay of entrance of Susan and Hawk, though, readers were again allowed the ambiance of the private eye walking alone, for another while. Instead of reeking of loneliness, though, this time disgust and frustration fumed in the solitary detective who realistically makes very little progress in his games, enduring endless hours and hour-packed days of tedious observation, and expensive exploration into seeming dead ends. Parker does Spenser's boredom shuffle to perfection. The plot heat-up (from the appealing gumshoe dragging) was gradual in a satisfying way (with literary style and bits of great humor), and effective in easing me into reading a few hours in the middle of the night... thinking I would just read long enough to get sleepy and fall back asleep. Sure. Finished the book first, then went back to sleep, after another 30 minutes tumbling the story around in my mind, feeling a healing contentm

"Taming a Sea-Horse" finds Spenser returning to simpler pursuits after the imitation James Bond heights of our hero's previous story, "A Catskill Eagle." Susan Silverman is back in Spenser's life with minimal mention of the hell she put him through in the last couple of books when she was off in California. But they are very happy together, although they now find very little time to do any real cooking. The problem this time around is an old one revisited: April Kyle, the teenage prostitute Spenser saved in "Ceremony" has left the call girl service of Patricia Utley and has started turning tricks for Robert Rambeaux, the man she supposedly loves. Spenser does a little investigating but before he gets too deep into the matter April disappears, Rambeaux is beaten up by somebody other than Spenser, and one of the hookers our hero intereviewed is murdered. Once again, there is much more to the case than meets the eye.This is an intimate Spenser novel, which was certainly a wise move on Robert B. Parker's part after the epic scale of its predecessor. At the end of "Ceremony," Spencer and Susan were planning on taking April to meet Mrs. Utley because they could not come up with a better solution and we could only guess at what would become of the young girl. Now the gap of the last four years has been filed in and our hero has another chance to help the young girl, whom I suspect might be on her way to being the surrogate daughter in Spenser's growing symbolic family unit. While "Taming a Sea-Horse" might seem to cover some of the ground Robert B. Parker has covered before, there is always some sort of twist, and it is not understatement to say that this time around the story ends not with a bang, but with a whimper.