Rating: 
Summary: Exquisite!
Review: Spencer is truly himself here. He is hired to protect a lesbian author who is a feminist activist. Parker creates her to be a warm person if a bit prickly. This remarkable story is really more about what Heterosexual Spencer is and how he feels about this lesbian person (and oh, by the way, Susan is there and contributing to both solutions) how she must come to realize that even though he is everything she feels she must fight against, she grudgingly comes to respect and, yes, admire Spencer. It sounds hokey, and the lesbian angle is not a turn on either. But trust me, this book is special. I have come across it late, this being 1999, but it is truly a remarkable book. You cannot read it without feeling good.
Rating:
Summary: Spenser studies gay and feminist issues
Review: Spenser has a lobster dinner and is contracted to bodyguard a lesbian author, Rachel Wallace. Rachel has received death threats after writing an expose of discrimination in the workplace. You have to remember this is '80 while reading it - Spenser makes several "questionable" comments, and her foes are definitely many and bigoted. Right from the start Spenser has to protect her, although their personalities clash. He tromps all over her while trying to "save her" because of course she can't take care of herself. Rachel fires him, and *poof* she's kidnapped. Spenser finds a bigoted family with some deep conflicts. He traces through a KKK member, some loansharks, gets beaten up and drives in the snow in his 1968 Chevy Convertible. Lucky he didn't try it in Susan's MG. Spenser drinks Becks, Molsons and Asti Spumanti. Rachel, of course, is rescued in dramatic fashion. The book ends with her curled up in Spenser's apartment, holding his hand as she sleeps. My Notes: Well, I suppose even now bigotry exists, maybe I fool myself that it's not as bad as the book makes it out to be. It was pretty nasty for a woman who was just writing books. Spenser, who later has a gay police officer friend, is seriously offensive himself a few times. But I suppose to have him "supporting" a lesbian activist in '80 was a reasonably strong move. He has at various times lobster, shrimp, and oysters, even though he claimed earlier to not like fish. Susan pokes her head in for a scene and *poof* is gone - not much for a woman he swore eternal love to and couldn't live without only a short while ago. As much as Susan can generally be annoying, I like when she and Rachel talk, and Susan is gently helping the Rachel-Spenser interaction go more smoothly. Rachel says "Jeez does Spenser protect you?" and Susan replies "No, we protect each other, sort of how I'm looking out for him now." Rachel grudgingly admits this is true, and healthy. Interestingly, Susan knows how to cook in this one - onions, peppers, mushrooms. She even makes ham sandwiches (with the ham from Millerton NY, hickory smoked, no nitrates). She must have forgotten soon thereafter. Susan's power is growing - in this story it says "Her interest in people was emanating. One could almost feel it." It won't be long before the perennial word, "Palpable" shows up!! Spenser is definitely relaxing into his role in the world - I think (bigotry aside) this is the first book that he's really "comfortable with himself" in. He doesn't question his right to do things, he just does them. He punches the picketer. He jumps in when people try to drag her off. He does his job, period. Susan calls him a "Sir Gawain". It's interesting to hear Rachel bashing Spenser all the time but admit in the end that she needed him to be what he was to rescue her. I wonder if this is a pre-emptive strike at those reviewers who criticize Spenser for being so "macho" - right in the book you have the arguments both ways. Very entertaining. Sadly, no Hawk at all in this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Somewhat below par but still quite good fun Spencer story
Review: This is the sixth instalment of Robert Parker's long series of Spencer novels. Spencer - who, like Dexter's Morse - appears wholly to eschew his Christian name, is a Boston-based private detective and general all-round troubleshooter who combines extreme toughness and a degree of machismo with a certain gentleness and decency. The novels are perhaps a bit on the trashy side but very readable, fun, pacy and entertaining. In some ways this promises to be one of the more interesting as Spencer with his very traditional masculine virtues is assigned to act as a bodyguard to a radical feminist lesbian writer, the Rachel Wallace of the title, who has been receiving threats as her new book heads for the press. Relations between Spencer and Wallace are indeed decidedly strained and after a sort time she fires him. Foolishly as it turns out as she soon afterwards disappears. The rest of the book is Spencer looking for her.
In fact, while the personality clash between Spencer and Wallace is quite entertaining, it's soon over, replaced by a lone Spencer on her trail. Here it does flag a bit and is a little less gripping and readable than the few others in the series I've read. Entertaining enough nonetheless.
Rating:
Summary: Off His Game
Review: This Spenser novel was hard to finish, something rare in the world of Robert B. Parker. Spenser was okay, although I never got a clear feeling as to why he would care about a bad-tempered, humorless, vicious (...) like Rachel Wallace. Like most humorless people, she took herself and her ideas way too serious. And like most feminists I have known (and I am a female), she hates being stereotyped yet attacks Spenser over and over again with her own sterotypes about masculine men. Just another loud-mouthed hypocrit. Parker did have her character down cold, but just didn't create a believable interaction between her and Spenser. Maybe next time.
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