Rating: 
Summary: Banter and quips... wit, wisdom and humor!!!!
Review:
This is classic Robert Parker novel, at his best. The dialogue cracks with wit, wisdom and humor. The banter and the quips that shoot back and forth are great!! The wonderful characters are all back, taking on another investigative job where things are not what they are portrayed to be. When Robert Spenser, a private detective accepts a simple job from a crying woman, nothing tips him that he is dealing with a rat's nest of deceit and deception that soon reveals itself, piece by piece. Spenser depends on his long time love, Susan, to help him understand the inner workings of the minds involved. His friend and compadre, Hawk, works with him protecting clients and informants. They all work together, observing and asking the right questions as one clue after another reveals new information that things are not quite what they appear.
This is a modern, yet classic detective novel, in the same enjoyable style of Chandler and Hammett!!
Rating: 
Summary: Good little page turner
Review: "Bad Business" is a reliable mid-level Spenser entry... it isn't among the memorable greats ("Early Autumn", "A Catskill Eagle", "Small Vices") but it isn't needlessly convoluted or clunky like some of the lesser volumes ("Sudden Mischief", "Hush Money"). It's got the quips, a nice little plot heavy on sex and greed (both topics always good in a thriller), an amusing new supporting character or two (Spenser's CPA friend is fun) and continues the happy trend of recent Spensers by not relentlessly promoting the value of psychiatrists and therapists to the reading public. All in all, an enjoyable read.
Rating: 
Summary: This is a typical Spenser book...
Review: ...which I happen to like. I think I've read them all and usually I am pleased. This one was a keeper.
Oh, to be sure, there's the required comments about Spenser and Susan's relationship and why they don't want to get married. There's the required comments about Spenser and Hawk's relationship and how they'd die for each other, etc. There's the required comments about Spenser's checkered career in law enforcement. It's a formula to be sure, but I like the formula.
Spenser's comments and observations are pure gold and the case was interesting because it (sort of) explains what happened to Enron.
I guess I'm over the fact that Spenser never ages (Parker must have been hearing comments because he includes a NY Times review that excuses this fact inside the dust cover at the beginning of the synopsis) - it doesn't bother me with James Bond, why should it bother me with Spenser?
Rating:
Summary: Great Fun
Review: A convoluted soap-opera gone deadly. I never knew that Spenser would accept an assignment as mundane as following a cheating husband. But the consequences are fatal, creating one of Parker's more enjoyable mysteries. Good reading.
Rating:
Summary: Robert B Parker Back
Review: After Stone Cold I thought Robert Parker lost his edge. I couldn't be so wrong. Big Businesss more than makes up for it. With it starting with Spenser being hired to spy on a client's husband. But there more than meets the eye to this tale. With a surprise ending I doubt anyone saw coming. Hooray he's back So watchout.
Rating: 
Summary: Less Susan, More Hawk
Review: An absurd outing here in which Spenser singlehandedly discovers an Enron-like mess and talks it to death with his love-bunny Susan. Hawk is left with slightly more than a walk-on...to check out a singles group no less...and a serial killer is found doing murders on demand for his gay lover, a radio talk-show host. I especially dozed through Spenser's accountant discussing audit procedures which, as far as I could tell, must have been the book's only action sequence 'cause I sure couldn't find any others.
Spenser needs less Susan (in fact, killing her off would spark the series, send Spenser, Hawk and crew on a quest to find her killer and could eventually lead to encounters with Rita Fiore, a sharper and more exciting character), more Hawk and more of the wry good fun Parker used to poke. Even the brilliant Joe Mantegna who reads the CD version sounded as though he was straining not to yawn through this. The title here is ironically accurate...this is Bad Business for anyone who craves the Spenser of Parker's first dozen books.
Rating:
Summary: Spenser back in "Bad Business"
Review: As his legions of fans know, author Robert B. Parker does not provide novels with deep complicated characters or byzantine plots. What he does provide, especially in the Spenser series novels, are books where good is clearly good, bad is very bad and gray simply, for the most part, does not exist. The characters are shallow, the women are usually attracted to Spenser but he will resist mightily their advances because of his love for Susan, and Hawk will be there with style to provide needed muscle on occasion. In short, it is a formula that has worked for years and his latest novel, Bad Business, follows the formula making it another lightweight though entertaining read.This time around the initial beautiful woman near tears in Spenser's office is Marlene Cowley. She wants to hire Spenser to investigate her husband, Trent Cowley. She is convinced he is cheating on her and wants proof that will humiliate and destroy him in open court. Spenser reluctantly agrees as he does not care for this type of cases and such proof isn't required in the courts of today. Before long, Spenser discovers that his client has a tail of her own. Apparently Trent shares the same concerns and has hired another investigator to tail her. The two investigators as a matter of professional courtesy acknowledge each other's case but neither can explain why there soon appears to be yet another investigator involved. Spenser begins looking at that angle and before he can get very far, the deaths begin. The two investigators soon vanish and Spenser is left working a case that grows stranger by the day. The reader is left with a shallow but entertaining read as Spenser delves into the world of corporate finance. Hawk is his usual self, Susan is beautiful and offers insightful advice when needed as always, and Pearl the wonder dog is always around and the subject of many asides. In short, this is the usual Spenser with no surprises and no new ground is covered. The novel at 310 pages is a fast read and by the end, all is right with the world once again. Who could ask for more?
Rating:
Summary: Bad Business
Review: Bad Business is Robert B. Parker's 31st Spenser novel. Marlene Rowley hires Spenser to find out if her husband, Trent Rowley, is having an affair. He quickly determines that Rowley is sleeping with Ellen Eisen, the wife of Bernard Eisen, one of Rowley's associates at Kinergy, an energy-brokering company. Spenser also discovers that someone was also following Ellen, and he finds out later that another detective was following Marlene Rowley. Before Spenser can investigate further, Trent Rowley is murdered. Then, another Kinergy employee is found murdered. Marlene hires Spenser to find Trent's killer. Everything points to Darrin O'Mara, a talk show radio host who advocates wife swapping and claims that courtly love can only be found by having affairs with other people. As Spenser digs deeper, he uncovers shady accounting procedures that show Kinergy is not as strong financially as the public is led to believe. The story was a little too much like the Enron case. The plot was rather complex, and the book did not move as fast for me as most Spenser novels do. This one was average for Parker, who is one of the best crime novelists working today.
Rating:
Summary: "It's still the same old story, a fight for love and glory."
Review: Good Spenser. This probably is a sufficient enough review. But the reason, I think, that we love him and all of his smugness and predictability and relentless search for truth and Ms. Silverman is just that, it is good, it is fair, and like the old John Wayne movies, it's big. Maybe bigger than life. We get older and we don't have heroes anymore. Politicians? Seems kind of silly, doesn't it? Professional athletes get indicted by the Federal Courts, ex-sports icons shoot people.
There are judicial inquiries into drugs, sex, violence, and betting. Movie stars get up and tell us about the war. We're down to beer commercials. And then there's Spenser. Solid. Available. Proposing, then disposing. There's a funny scene here where the sexual predator Adele is discussing with Susan how odd it is to see the relationship between Hawk and Spenser and Vinnie. Susan says 'there are more of them,' and then names Belson, Quirk, Chollo, Fortunato, Farrell, Teddy Sapp, Bobby Horse, Healy." Then pretty Adele asks what may be the perfect question and answer to all of us who have followed Spenser for thirty years. Adele says asking of Susan, how Susan knows Hawk will be at a certain dangerous place in the next few hours, and Susan says, "because he said so." There's still another reason why we follow him around decade after decade and it's the lyrical quality of Parker's prose. Early on in a sober moment Spenser is talking to Susan in Kennebunkport, Maine. While she talks he looks out at the shoreline, then the water. You can see him there, with his soulmate, listening but nonetheless taking it all in. He thinks "The movement of the immediate water dragged me outward toward a bigger and bigger seascape until I felt the near eternal presence of the ocean far past the horizen." That's it for me. He never lets me down. 5 stars. Larry Scantlebury
Rating: 
Summary: Parker's writing in his sleep!
Review: I didn't think it was possible for Parker to give us even MORE of the incredibly irritating Susan Silverman, but when you team that up with very little Hawk and even more banal "banter" between Susan and Spenser, this book is a loser. Give it up Mr. Parker...you've lost it!
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