Review by Booklist Review
The relationship between Spenser, Parker's ageless hero, and Susan Silverman, the sleuth's longtime lover, takes center stage in this twenty-fifth installment in the perennially best-selling series. When Susan's ex-husband, Brad, appears after a decades-long absence, nearly broke and the object of a sexual-harassment suit, Spenser reluctantly agrees to help. As he investigates the circumstances surrounding the suit, he discovers that fund-raiser Brad is swimming in very deep water: mobsters, who were using his fund-raising campaigns to launder money, have discovered he was cooking the already cooked books and aren't at all pleased. The deeper Spenser digs, the more bodies he uncovers and the more culpable Brad appears to be. The mystery plot here is nothing special--Spenser and the inimitable Hawk snoop, crack wise, rough up bad guys, and solve the case, just like always--but the parallel plot involving Susan coming to terms with the demons of her childhood and her need to control the dangerous men in her life gives the novel a beyond-genre dimension. Yes, Spenser is a little too sensitive, and Susan is a little too wise, but Parker has always known how to mix fantasy and realism in a way that works as wish fulfillment for reality-bound readers. This is a hard-boiled love story with an irresistible soft spot in its heart: substitute mobsters for communists, and you have The Way We Were with a happy ending. --Bill Ott
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The 25th Spenser novel isn't a romance, but it's all about love. In early springtime, Susan Silverman, the elegant psychologist and lover who long ago softened the heart of Boston's preeminent thug-sized PI, asks Spenser to investigate the sexual harassment suit that has been filed against her first husband, Brad Sterling. Susan's ambivalence about Brad's predicament doesn't make the case easy for Spenser; nor does the gradually disclosed involvement of the noted Harvard Law School professor whose young wife is one of the plaintiffs. As Spenser and his sidekick, Hawk, trace Brad's business dealings (he's a professional fund-raiser who's hired to run mammoth charity events), they also come up against a lawyer employed by the local organized crime crowd and some hired muscle associated with same, one of whom is found fatally shot in Brad's office. The next murder victim, a woman, turns out to be the director of a counseling service for ex-cons, which was also listed as benefiting from the most recent charity bash. What's more, the dead woman had her own connection to the still-missing Brad. Threatened repeatedly with fists and guns while coping with Susan's rare emotional uncertainty, Spenser stays the course to a resolution in which he and Susan both prevail. The mystery in this valentine may be insubstantial, but readers who pick up Parker's bestselling series for its characters and atmosphere will be delighted. BOMC main selection. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This time Spenser is in a real mess: he's agreed to help his girlfriend's ex-husband fight charges of sexual harassment, but when his client disappears, he quickly realizes that a whole lot more is at stake. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In Spenser's 25th appearance, the peerless Boston shamus is reduced to doing pro bono work on behalf of his lover Susan Silverman's scapegrace of an ex-husband. At least that's how it starts out. Brad Sterling (after sharing his last name with Susan, he anglicized himself out of it) is a promoter who arranges charity fund-raisers, and the fallout from the latest one, a big-tent event called Galapalooza, is a sexual harassment suit against him. Even after Brad crawls to his first ex (there are others) for help, he's too manly to admit to Spenser that he's in a jam--their first scene together is all coy giggles on Brad's part, all slow bum on Spenser's--so there's nothing for Spenser to do but talk to the four well-connected complainants, who all, to a woman, tell him they have nothing to say about the case. The obligatory goons show up to threaten Spenser if he doesn't give up the case, but not only do they fail to muss his hair, they don't keep him from finding out that Galapalooza was a bust for participants besides Brad; it didn't raise money for anybody--except possibly an organization called Civil Streets, whose president, Carla Quagliozzi, is just as silent as the alleged harassees, and just as menacing--via her secret weapon, seamy attorney Richard Gavin--as the goons. Then Brad takes a powder, leaving behind a dead body in his office The cops are after Brad; the goons are after Spenser; and Spenser turns out, by the time he's fished the last secret out of Galapalooza, to be after just about every crimelord in Boston. Parker (Small Vices, 1997, etc.) writes as mean a page as ever. But this time the daisy chain of felonies is limp and illogical, and the deep moralizing--Susan's florid attitudinizing about her onetime husband--is merely self-important. Fortunately, there's always next year. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
