Rating: 
Summary: Spenser (or Parker) Rules, OK.
Review: More plot to this novel ~ more detecting too ~ than some other Spenser stories. Still, plot is not everything, and still not the real reason one reads Parker. The interplay between Spenser and Susan is as strong as ever; Hawk is in Burma ~ don't ask ~ so we miss seeing him and Spenser. There is a Hawk replacement in the person of Chollo, a Latino hit-man from one of Spenser's West Coast connexions and, while not as detailed or intricate as the Hawk conversations, his with Spenser are still pleasurable. The pretext for the action this time is the disappearance of Lisa St. Claire, wife of Spenser's Boston PD friend Frank Belson. When Belson is hit with three shots from behind Spenser activates himself and goes hunting. The trail leads to a Hispanic community in northern Massachusetts ~ hence the introduction of the Latino side-kick. A welcome innovation (from Parker, not for fiction as a whole) is the use of third person sections interspersed, in a different type-face, telling of Lisa's experience. We thus are given both the hunter and hunted points of view.
Rating:
Summary: Spenser (or Parker) Rules, OK.
Review: More plot to this novel ~ more detecting too ~ than some other Spenser stories. Still, plot is not everything, and still not the real reason one reads Parker. The interplay between Spenser and Susan is as strong as ever; Hawk is in Burma ~ don't ask ~ so we miss seeing him and Spenser. There is a Hawk replacement in the person of Chollo, a Latino hit-man from one of Spenser's West Coast connexions and, while not as detailed or intricate as the Hawk conversations, his with Spenser are still pleasurable. The pretext for the action this time is the disappearance of Lisa St. Claire, wife of Spenser's Boston PD friend Frank Belson. When Belson is hit with three shots from behind Spenser activates himself and goes hunting. The trail leads to a Hispanic community in northern Massachusetts ~ hence the introduction of the Latino side-kick. A welcome innovation (from Parker, not for fiction as a whole) is the use of third person sections interspersed, in a different type-face, telling of Lisa's experience. We thus are given both the hunter and hunted points of view.
Rating:
Summary: Candy
Review: Robert Parker's Spencer series is like candy, very satisfying while being digested, but soon gone, leaving one wishing for more. I have read most of the Spenser books, and I have never been disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: so so
Review: Spenser gets a call from police friend Frank Belsen to look for his missing wife. Along the way, Spenser and Susan go to LA to uncover some background info, and pick up a Hispanic sidekick named Chollo. I didn't understand what motivated Chollo to join Spenser back to the east coast to finish the job, but Spenser needed him as Hawk is MIA in this book. Chollo wasn't nearly as entertaining as Hawk, but the basic premise of the book was pretty good.
Rating:
Summary: so so
Review: Spenser gets a call from police friend Frank Belsen to look for his missing wife. Along the way, Spenser and Susan go to LA to uncover some background info, and pick up a Hispanic sidekick named Chollo. I didn't understand what motivated Chollo to join Spenser back to the east coast to finish the job, but Spenser needed him as Hawk is MIA in this book. Chollo wasn't nearly as entertaining as Hawk, but the basic premise of the book was pretty good.
Rating:
Summary: My review
Review: The story takes place in Boston, Massachusetts. The narrator of the story is Spenser, who was hired to find Lisa St. Claire. Spenser is a private detective who used to work for the FBI. He is hired by Frank Belson to find his missing wife who is Lisa St. Claire. Her ex-husband, Luis Deleon, has kidnapped her. Luis is still madly in love with Lisa. But Lisa is in love with Frank, who is much older than she is. Every one assumes she left him because he is much older than she is and that is why a private detective is hire. During the investigation, Spenser found out a lot of personal things about Lisa St. Claire. She was not the person every one thought she is. Her real name was Angela Richard. She ran away from home ever since she was seventeen with her boy friend, Woody. Woody turns her in to a prostitute. One day she got caught and was sent to rehabilitation. There she decided to get her life back on track. Mean while, Frank was shot at on his front porch from behind leaving him in the hospital for a while. Luis had shot him. Luis was known for being a crazy person. He was the leader of a Hispanic gang. Luis was a hard person to find because no one likes to talk about him. She was kept in a castle like place with cameras all around the room recording her every move. Through out the novel it switches back and forth to the scene where Lisa was at and then back to Spenser.
I would recommend the novel because I found it very entertaining. It was like watching a movie. I can picture the whole thing. Spenser was very amusing. He was also tough. He states. "You'll think I'm offensive? I'll give you offensive. Ms. Lisa St. Claire's husband is a cop. Cops look out for each other. I can, if I have to, have some really short-tempered guys from the Essex County DA's I could probably even get them to come in here in force with the sirens singing and the blue lights flashing, and haul you ass down to Salem and ask you these same questions in a holding cell" (60). This quote shows what type of person he is. He can be serious but funny at same time. You can tell he is very serious with his work. He was not a boring guy.
This is a good novel if you're into mystery because through out the story you keep finding surprising things about Lisa. It made want to keep reading it. "I don't know could or couldn't. I will say that Angela lived a very harsh life, in very difficult circumstances. She had fewer restraint mechanisms perhaps than some women might have, and she harbored a lot of rage" (133). Here is when Spenser was meeting up with a woman named Madeline St. Claire. She was a psychiatrist that was seeing Lisa when she was in rehab. She was aware that Lisa was using her name, but did not seem to mind it much. The quote explains how Lisa life was and how she had a rage for men.
It was also interesting when Spenser investigate people. It made me seem like I was the investigator. Each interviewer gave helpful facts about Lisa and her whereabouts. There were a lot of people who he had to investigate until he was sure it was Luis who kidnapped her. Each investigation was at a different place. He gave great descriptions when the story takes place. It makes the novel seem so realistic.
Overall, I enjoyed reading the novel very much. There were times where I did not want to stop reading because there were things that I wanted to know. This is a great novel for entertainment. It was full of drama and humor. You will like Spenser. It will make reading fun. A great novel to share with a friends or love ones.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Story
Review: This one is one of the better installments in the Spenser series. Hawk is not featured, but it was still surprisingly good with the addition of Chollo from California (from a previous story). Why Chollo would be willing to help Spenser fight this fight in Massachusetts was never explained, but it was still fun and effective. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Spenser and a new sidekick look for Belson's wife
Review: When "Thin Air" begins with the italicized description of a woman bound in the back of a van, abducted by someone who knows her and is videotaping everything, it is reminiscent of Robert B. Parker's "Crimson Joy," the first Spenser novel to get away from the first person narrative style of the series. When Detective Frank Belson shows up and tells our hero that his wife is gone, we know the identity of the woman in the van. As far as her husband is concerned, Lisa St. Claire has disappeared into "Thin Air" (Parker has been much more mundane with his titles in his recent efforts and it has been years since he started off with any grandiose literary quotations). Each Spenser novel is unique in its own way and for this one the main trick is that we know what has happened to the damsel in distress and we get to watch as our hero gets closer and closer. Belson does not know anything about his wife before the fateful night they met, and, of course, Spenser uncovers a whole lot of information. But what looks like the old story of the beautiful young wife who leaves her older husband is shattered when Belson is ambushed and almost killed. Whereas the previous Spenser novel dealt with Chinatown, "Thin Air" focuses on the Hispanic elements in the greater Boston area, which forces Spenser to use the assistance of Chollo, the enforcer for the L.A. mobster we met in "Stardust" (Hawk is in Burma--the mind boggles). But while most of the usual supporting cast is not around for this one, Spenser certainly meets a couple of interesting women in the course of his investigation (although I find it strange that Quirk is not a lot more involved in this one). Once again Spenser tries to put all the pieces together and then find a way of making everybody happy, but as usual, things never do work out perfectly. While certainly an atypical Spenser novel, "Thin Air" probably grades out as an average effort for Parker
Rating:
Summary: Spenser and a new sidekick look for Belson's wife
Review: When "Thin Air" begins with the italicized description of a woman bound in the back of a van, abducted by someone who knows her and is videotaping everything, it is reminiscent of Robert B. Parker's "Crimson Joy," the first Spenser novel to get away from the first person narrative style of the series. When Detective Frank Belson shows up and tells our hero that his wife is gone, we know the identity of the woman in the van. As far as her husband is concerned, Lisa St. Claire has disappeared into "Thin Air" (Parker has been much more mundane with his titles in his recent efforts and it has been years since he started off with any grandiose literary quotations). Each Spenser novel is unique in its own way and for this one the main trick is that we know what has happened to the damsel in distress and we get to watch as our hero gets closer and closer. Belson does not know anything about his wife before the fateful night they met, and, of course, Spenser uncovers a whole lot of information. But what looks like the old story of the beautiful young wife who leaves her older husband is shattered when Belson is ambushed and almost killed. Whereas the previous Spenser novel dealt with Chinatown, "Thin Air" focuses on the Hispanic elements in the greater Boston area, which forces Spenser to use the assistance of Chollo, the enforcer for the L.A. mobster we met in "Stardust" (Hawk is in Burma--the mind boggles). But while most of the usual supporting cast is not around for this one, Spenser certainly meets a couple of interesting women in the course of his investigation (although I find it strange that Quirk is not a lot more involved in this one). Once again Spenser tries to put all the pieces together and then find a way of making everybody happy, but as usual, things never do work out perfectly. While certainly an atypical Spenser novel, "Thin Air" probably grades out as an average effort for Parker
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