Rating: 
Summary: Parker & Spenser just going through the motions on this one
Review: Well, boys and girls, here we are at the fourteenth Spenser novel and it is probably too early to tell if our hero is in decline or if Robert B. Parker is just idling at this point. Our hero is hired by a newspaper to investigate the murder of one of its reporters who was checking out the cocaine trade in the central Massachusetts town of Wheaton. Spenser shows up, starts asking questions of practically everybody in town, but the responses are all the same: nobody knows anything except that maybe he should stop asking questions. But since the police are tailing him and the local Columbian cocaine kingpin threatens him, Spenser figures he must be on the right track and that if he just keeps making a nuisance of himself sooner or later something will slip through the cracks. In the wake of the epic storyline in which Susan Silverman leaves Spenser and eventually has to be rescued by our hero and Hawk, it is not surprising we are getting a series of more intimate adventures. The sense that Parker is going through the motions at this point comes from the little things: Spenser and Susan are happy and content without any mention to the personal traumas that compelled her to head to California in the first place, and their happiness consists of lots of sex, even more looking at one another, and virtually no cooking. On top of that I do not think he hits anybody in the entire book. No, this does not sound like the real Spenser to me either. For the first time I get the feeling Parker is starting to repeat himself a bit, since he continues his streak of getting people killed by just asking the wrong questions and Hawk always need to show up to help save the day. However, Susan does provide necessary psychological analysis at a key moment, so that degree from Harvard is getting good use. My main complaint would be that the resolution is rather abrupt and smacks a bit too much of just being over and done with, which knocks it down one star. I admit looking forward to the next book with some trepidation (But I have started reading "Crimson Joy" since I wrote my first draft of this review and its off to a VERY good start). As always, these books are easy reads well suited to the computer lifestyle: I have been polishing off at least one of these a day and that is without really trying to sneak in chapters here and there all day long at work.
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