Review by New York Times Review
Maybe you've heard of him. Named after the foster father (Eddie the Butcher) who taught him his trade, and introduced almost 30 years ago by Thomas Perry in "The Butcher's Boy," this cold-blooded professional killer is one of the immortals of the genre. Michael Schaeffer, to give this antihero his current alias, seemed a bit mechanical when he briefly came out of retirement two decades ago in "Sleeping Dogs," but he makes a great comeback in THE INFORMANT (Otto Penzler/ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27) - older, wiser and deadlier. Perry has to exert himself to engineer a reunion between Schaeffer, who has surfaced from anonymity to defend himself from the mafia goon squads that have taken a sudden interest in him, and Elizabeth Waring, a hypervigilant honcho with the Department of Justice whose fondest desire is to turn Schaeffer into a government informant. But once these uneasy civilities are attended to, the Butcher's Boy is free to kill again, in his own distinctly cruel and inventive way. The fun thing about his professional methods is how low-tech they are. That's poetic justice for a target like Frank Tosca, an oldschool underboss who has called an extraordinary meeting in Arizona to convince the fractious leaders of the big crime families that he can revitalize the mafia and lead it into a new golden age. While everyone is on high alert for marauders brandishing advanced weapons of war, the Butcher's Boy quietly sneaks into Tosca's cabin and slits his throat with a hunting knife he picked up at a sporting-goods store. Perry's immaculate style - clean, polished, uncluttered by messy emotions - suits the Butcher's Boy, who executes his kills with the same cool, dispassionate skill. But this time there's something almost human about his awareness of the limitations imposed by his aging body. Luckily, one of the lessons he learned from Eddie is that "killing was mostly a mental business. It required thinking clearly, not quickly." And his mind is still sharp enough to devise the kind of ingenious logistical traps a young computer gamer could only dream of. Given the shallow pool of prospective victims and suspects, it takes real skill to write a plausible whodunit about an undetected serial killer running amok in an English village. In DARK SIDE (Simon & Schuster, paper, $15), Belinda Bauer first shows us how someone might go crazy living in a place like Shipcott, a hamlet that looks "as if it had tumbled down the sides of the moor and landed haphazardly at the bottom." Arriving in the bleak midwinter to investigate the murder of an elderly woman as she lay paralyzed in her bed, the city-bred Detective Chief Inspector John Marvel is so appalled to find himself in the boondocks, obliged to waste his talents "on the low and the stupid," that out of sheer spite, he repeatedly subjects the local constable, Jonas Holly, to public humiliation. Jonas, a sweet, conscientious policeman who sacrificed his career ambitions to care for his dying wife, knows he doesn't deserve this ridicule. But the taunting notes the killer leaves behind as he continues his rampage touches some core of guilt Jonas can't bring himself to face. Set against a landscape that would tax anyone's sanity, Bauer's grim tale deploys a morbid wit that's positively wicked. Sam Acquillo, the likable beach bum hero in an erratic series by Chris Knopf, is nice to know when he's talking smart to his dog on the porch of his bayside cottage on the East End of Long Island or hanging with his fellow townies at a local bar in the off-season - and not taking himself too seriously as a hard-boiled noir hero. But when heroism is thrust upon him, as it is in BLACK SWAN (Permanent Press, $28), Sam is entitled to a bit of showing off. This he does when he and his girlfriend are delivering a sailboat to a friend and a fierce storm blows them to Fishers Island, where people are unfriendly and murder transpires. Knopf has mastered the verbal drill for tough guys in tight situations, and like Sam's nautical know-how, his banter with imperfect strangers is a cut above the norm. (Called out on a tactless remark and asked what's wrong with him, he replies: "Chronic inappropriateness.") This unexpected sail into danger makes for a stimulating story, providing Sam with a lot to tell the gang at the bar when he finally gets home. It's spring in Boston at the beginning of the late Robert B. Parker's final Spenser novel, SIXKILL (Putnam, $26.95). "The vernal equinox had done whatever it was it did," and opening day for the Red Sox is two weeks off when the bulky private eye is hired to determine exactly what happened in the hotel room where a young female movie fan died of asphyxiation after having sex with an actor called Jumbo Nelson. At close to 400 pounds and with his piggish habits, the "loud, arrogant, stupid, foul-mouthed" bad boy comedian, in town to make a movie, is probably as guilty as everyone suspects - but maybe not. Jumbo is a splendidly repulsive character, and Spenser applies his usual skills (one part muscle flexing to three parts snappy repartee) to a case in which mobsters and movie people figure prominently. But Parker's real coup in this novel is introducing us to Zebulon Sixkill, the athletically gifted Cree Indian Spenser rescues from a demeaning job as Jumbo's "driver, booze buddy and pimp." It's too sad to think about the further adventures these two might have had, so let's just leave Spenser where we found him - tasting spring and waiting for the season to open. 'Killing was mostly a mental business,' the Butcher's Boy learns. 'It required thinking clearly, not quickly.'
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [May 8, 2011]
Review by Booklist Review
This Spenser novel, billed by the publisher as the last Spenser novel completed by Robert B. Parker (leaving the door open for, perhaps, an incomplete manuscript to be completed by someone else), provides a pretty odd finale to the wonderful run of Spenser mysteries, in which it's the thirty-ninth. The book has a draft quality to it. Parker's typically vivid descriptions of place and persons (Boston, Spenser's office, the suspects Spenser encounters) are almost entirely missing. Most of the writing showcases Parker's only weak point, his tendency to have all the characters, even Spenser's psychologist girlfriend, Susan, speak George Raft-like, B-movie dialogue. The mystery centers on a loutish movie star who invites a teen fan to his hotel room. When the girl turns up dead, suspicion centers on the star, and longtime Spenser friend, Lieutenant Quirk, of the Boston PD, asks the PI to investigate on the quiet. The oddest thing about the novel is the eponymous Sixkill, a Cree Indian bodyguard and pimp for the movie star, whom Spenser takes under his wing, starting with boxing lessons. Every conceivable bad-taste joke about Native Americans is made, to sophomorish effect. Spenser's sidekick, Hawk, meanwhile, is inexplicably still somewhere in central Asia. This may cap the Spenser series, though not in the beautifully crafted way of the penultimate Spenser novel, Painted Ladies (2010).--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
An intriguing new supporting character and the usual entertaining dialogue lift the 39th and, sadly, last Spenser novel (after Painted Ladies) from MWA Grand Master Parker (1932-2010). When 20-year-old Dawn Lopata expires of apparent asphyxiation after having sex with megamovie star Jumbo Nelson in his hotel room, Spenser's best friend in the Boston PD, Capt. Martin Quirk, arranges for Nelson's defense attorney to hire Spenser. Though it appears the obnoxious Nelson killed Lopata, Quirk has his doubts. Spenser's initial attempt to get Nelson to talk about what happened ends in mutual threats and insults. While the truth about the fatal night takes a backseat for too long to make the resolution satisfying, the scenes featuring Spenser's longtime love interest, Susan Silverman, are as snappy as ever. Zebulon "Z" Sixkill, the actor's American Indian bodyguard with whom the PI develops an unexpected relationship, would probably have gotten more play in future books had Parker lived to write them. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Parker's final Spenser book is a reminder of just how much we'll miss the beloved crime writer, who died in January 2010. Zebulon Sixkill, a Cree Indian whose college football career was sidetracked by the love of a bad woman, is the bodyguard for Jumbo Nelson, a (physically) huge movie star working in Boston. Jumbo's outsized appetites leave a young woman dead, and with Z the only potential witness, Jumbo's guilt or innocence becomes an open question. When Jumbo fires Z, Spenser takes him in and refines Z from an intimidating presence to a genuinely dangerous man. When Spenser tells Susan Silverman, "I know what I like and what I don't like, and what I'm willing to do and what I'm not, and I try to be guided by that," readers couldn't ask for a better epitaph for Spenser and Parker. [See Prepub Alert, 11/1/10.] (c) Copyright 2011. 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
The mysterious death of a star-struck young woman who struck a star's fancy provides the basis for Spenser's valedictory outing.One minute Dawn Lopata was alive in her hotel-room bed, the next she was dead, somehow strangled while she was in the bathroom. At least that's the story Jumbo Nelson tells. Since it's not much of a story, his movie studio hires Rita Fiore's Boston law firm to dig deeper, and Rita hires Spenser to do the real digging. The job's not easy, because among all of Spenser's checkered clientele (Painted Ladies,2010, etc.), Jumbo is the most repellent, a truculent brat who cares about nothing but his own oversized appetites. It's no surprise when he fires Spenser and Rita, leaving Spenser to work the case pro bono and giving him the potential to irritate some very influential people. The only bright spot is Jumbo's Cree bodyguard, Zebulon Sixkill. On their first encounter, Spenser and Z sniff around each other; on their second, Spenser thrashes Z. But Spenser breaks the mold when Z turns up asleep outside Spenser's office door, and Spenser takes him in and starts the one-time college-football star, whose back story is presented through a series of awkward flashbacks, on the road to redemption. As luck would have it, the road winds through some familiar areas: serving as a sparring partner, passing on crucial information about Dawn Lopata's last moments, backing up Spenser's play against the local thugs hired to beat him up, and cutting back on the sauce so that he'll be sharp enough to help deal with the inevitable tough guys from Hollywood who regard Jumbo as a cash cow whose value has to be maintained no matter what.By no means as substantial or resourceful as Parker's best, but a treasurable demonstration of the bromide that "life is mostly metaphor"at least to the peerless private eye and his fans.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
