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Summary: Welcome back, Spenser and crew!
Review: This book comes close to vintage Spenser. He's based in Boston, not flying off to some desert town in Arizona. He brings back the gang: Hawk, Vinnie, Susan, and more. Reading Bad Business means visiting these old friends. Like many of Parker's readers, they've become middle-aged and settled. (In a much earlier book, Spenser reluctantly dons reading glasses!) As a result, there's less room for character growth. Susan's a successful shrink, significant other and non-cook...just as she was in the last ten or so books. Hawk continues to be larger-than-life. Where can they go from here? Author Parker needs to give them some tough challenges to reveal new layers. The plot of this novel has been amply described in editorial reviews as well as other customer reviews. I agree with those who question the financial elements of the plot, where Spenser is out of his element. He's much better when he can mete out his own version of justice. However, Parker has managed to capture subtle aspects of corporate life with his usual wit, one beat away from satire. I've met CEO's just like Bob Cooper. Although they headed smaller companies, they put on a good show, demonstrated boundless enthusiasm even when they'd rather be eating mud, and kept their hands clean. Even so, I wish Parker had focused more on the "growth seminars" and their aftermath. And I wish the villains had been more evil and less weasly. Nobody worth shooting here! In my opinion, Early Autumn was Parker's all-time best book. You could read Early Autumn as a textbook of child and adolescent psychology. Other books showed Spenser's biting wit as he cut through conventions and pretentious displays. Plots were tighter and held more surprises. Everybody's mellowed. Inevitable but Bad Business still held my attention more than most mysteries I read these days. And I'll be waiting for the next.
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Summary: Parker on the upswig--this is a much better Spenser novel
Review: This is Parker's 31st Spenser novel. As you'd expect in a series this long, there have been high points and low points. 2 to 3 books back things had flattened out and Spenser was getting too predictable. That has changed. In Bad Business Spenser is involved in tailing an executive at Kinergy--a company that might as well have just been called Enron and been done with it--after being hired by the executive's wife. it soon transpires lots of people are tailing lots of people at Kinergy. When the executive in Spenser's sights is killed, things get even more complicated. After 31 novels Parker has a pretty full corral of stock characters to draw from. He's fairly sparing in this one. The focus here is more on the story. The story's pretty good. It's more complex and suspenseful than has been the norm lately--more intricate and less predictable. But the good news here is that Spenser himself is in very good form. Back is the wry, wisecracking, violent intellectual that has built this series into what it is. The re-energizing of Spenser is a welcome development. Parker is also branching out a nit--from the purely noir conceptualization to a bit of homage of other great mystery writers. The ending is a group-room scene reminiscent of-and worthy of--a Nero Wolfe novel by Rex Stout. All in all a very nice diversion and a very pleasant read.
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Summary: someone to watch over me
Review: This is the 31st novel in the Spenser series. The Boston PI is trying to get the goods on a cheating husband when the husband turns up dead. This leads Spenser to a series of intrigues involving wife-swapping at a "power selling" company and a contoversial radio psychologist.
The stakes are a little low here, the villains are too buffoonish to do more than confuse Spenser for little while, and the client is a bit of shrew. Old fans of this series will enjoy Spenser's warmly erotic relationship with his longtime love Susan and his friendship with loyal sidekick Hawk. Parker' s droll humor is on display and he has a way with how men talk to each other. If you're an old fan, you'll enjoy this, but if you're new to this series, start with an old one like EARLY AUTUMN or LOOKING FOR RACHEL WALLACE.
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Summary: Back in the groove
Review: This Parker/Spenser stays on the same solid, predictable, but entertaining track as BACK STORY. Spenser is his familiar, wonderful old self -- doing all the right things for his own reasons, living up to his personal code of ethics, and appalled when the world doesn't do the same. The plot is more "Law and Order/ripped from today's headlines" than many of Parker's other efforts, but it doesn't suffer from it and doesn't seem like exploitation. Susan appears in the story for no particular reason, but at least she doesn't annoy me so much my teeth hurt this time. It's not thought provoking Spenser, like MORTAL STAKES or RACHEL WALLACE, but it's solid, welcome time spent with old friends.
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Summary: Spenser is Back
Review: Three private eyes nearly fall all over each other following supposedly unfaithful spouces. After the CFO of an Enron-like energy trader is found dead, Spenser is drawn into deadly intramural corporate games. Parker's ageless sleuth has shown he is the new Travis McGee already, but this solid and exciting work demonstrates why Parker is so popular. Topical intrigue and ingenious plots make for great crime fiction. Five stars aren't enough.
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Summary: Spenser Meets Enron
Review: Well, not really. It's called Kinergy in the book, but it's a firm that deals in buying and selling energy, and the executives have been playing fast and loose with the accounts. Spenser gets involved when the wife of one of the execs asks him to gather evidence that her husband has been playing around with another woman. Spenser follows the husband and finds that this is indeed true; the plot thickens when he discovers another PI has been shadowing the husband's paramour. It seems he's been asked to check up on the woman's activities by >her< husband. Before we're done, yet a third PI will turn up, trailing another female member of this menage-a-many. It develops that the executives' wives are in the thrall of a TV personality who has convinced them that swapping of mates is the best way to keep their marriages vital and alive. Things get a little messy when the husband that Spenser was hired to follow is shot dead in his office. There's much more -- a chief of security who's a former CIA agent, a serial killer who keeps a scrapbook of his victims, a second death that's made to look like a suicide, a female executive who fears for her life, as well as a tutorial by Spenser's CPA pal on the intricacies of keeping a company's stock price soaring despite the fact that there's no money coming in. It all hangs together. In fact, in terms of plot, it's very well constructed . . . but it's not good Spenser. The usual cast of characters is on hand, including Quirk, Hawk, Vinnie Morris and Vinnie's double-barreled shotgun, but they have very little to do. The two murders occur offstage, the cops don't even go through the motions of suspecting Spenser, the threats from the protagonists against Spenser are half-hearted at best, Vinnie's shotgun goes unused, and Hawk gets most of his exercise carrying Susan Silverman's luggage. There's a good deal of Susan in this one, which may be good or bad news, depending on your feelings about the character. I think she adds a lot to the series in general, but she plays too large a role here. It's Susan, for instance, who ultimately figures out whodunnit, by applying logic to the situation. This is not a good sign. Spenser's modus operandi has always been to poke his nose in where it's not wanted, ask questions that people don't want to answer, and in general make himself annoying until somebody tries to kill him. Logic has little to do with it, nor should it. After an unsuccessful interview with one of the suspects, who mouths off and gets away with it, Susan points out that there was a time in the past when Spenser would have popped him one. Spenser says that maybe he's becoming more mellow. Let's hope not.
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Summary: Dialogue makes the book...
Review: When an author is as prolific as Robert B. Parker, some books are going to be better than others. Bad Business, the 31st book in his Spenser series, is better than many of his later efforts.
Marlene Rowley hires Spenser to tail her husband, who she suspects of having an affair. Husband, Trent, is a big executive at an energy company called Kinergy (think Enron). It quickly becomes apparent that Spenser isn't the only PI following people around, and when Trent ends up murdered (in his Kinergy office no less), Marlene then engages Spenser to find the killer. Marlene is totally obnoxious and self-centered, and is not an easy person to work for. Spenser encountered lots of twists and turns, and not only is there the business angle, but there are also sex seminars, wife-swapping, an escort service, missing PI's, another murder and a host of other possible motives.
But what makes Parker so much fun to read is his witty, snappy, first-rate dialogue. Spenser interviewing possible suspects is a hoot. The conversation between Spenser and Hawk is even better. So even though this book could have been a bit longer, it was definitely worth reading. Too bad they stopped filming the Spenser television series, as Bad Business would have made one dandy episode.
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Summary: Shades of Enron
Review: When Spenser is hired by a woman to investigate her husband for potential divorce proceedings, he finds himself involved in a corporate snake pit. There is wife swapping, a corporate pimp, shell companies, creative accounting, greed, and a presidential wannabe who can't keep his pants zipped. Unlike the real life corporate scandals, in this case the Chief Financial Officer gets whacked. Suspicion points in various directions. There is the usual cast of characters, with Hawk and Vinnie lending helping hands, friends with the police, Spenser's girlfriend Susan and the dog they share, and various other characters that show up, some new and some old. The killers are caught, but some guilty parties seem to walk away. There is a major loose end as the corporation seems to be left in limbo. My oldest niece would call the novel brain candy. It is light reading for a rainy evening, a weekend at the beach, a long commute or an airline flight. It contains some details for setting up shell companies and creating ficticious assets. The novel contains language (mainly the F word in its various forms), implied sexual activity, and a couple murders, but nothing graphic. I would rate it at about the PG-13 level.
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Summary: Backtracker
Review: why have I not read Parker before? Now I'll have to track down the other titles.
After reading 'That Caucafrican Distraction' by HW Benjamin, I was so emotionally spent I didn't read for a few weeks. Fortunately I found Bad Business, and it removed that 'Distraction' novel from my mind for awhile
Rating:
Summary: Sharp, witty, insightful, and good
Review: With sharply-drawn characterizations like McCrae's uses in his "Bark of the Dogwood," and a fast pace and plot worthy of Grisham, "Bad Business" can't help but succeed. There's enough twists and turns in this page turner for several books, and frankly, at times, it was a little overwhelming. I thoroughly loved this Parker novel and will await many more. Bravo!
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