GOD SAVE THE CHILD is essential for Spenser fans. It is the second novel in the series, and is the first to feature Spenser's girlfriend, Dr. Susan Silverman, who would play a central role in the rest of the books. One of the great pleasures in this novel is reading about their first date.

The storyline of GOD SAVE THE CHILD involves a kidnapping of a 15-year old boy, and Spenser is hired by the parents to discover his whereabouts. The plot is nothing special, but the writing is strong and remarkably clever, as Parker begins to adopt his own voice, as opposed to just imitating Raymond Chandler's style.

This isn't the best Spenser novel, but it is well worth reading. Spenser is still a relatively young man in GOD SAVE THE CHILD (37 years old), and it's fun to watch him develop as a character. It is also enjoyable to travel back in time to 1974, and watch how Parker portrays Boston society during this period. In many ways, it is very similar to modern times.

Overall, this is a fun, quick read, and well worth your time.

The second book in the Spenser series gives us additional information about the character as well as continuing to show him as a wise-a** with little respect for anyone, unless they earn it.

The book opens with him being hired to find a missing boy (Kevin), whom the parents believe has been kidnapped. They begin to receive bizarre ransom notes and phone calls; the mother - who is a serious drama queen - decides Spenser's time would be better spent watching over her. The trouble compounds when the family lawyer is found dead in their living room.

Spenser tracks down a body-builder named Vic Harroway, with whom several youngsters are living. He learns that Vic is not only homosexual, but prefers "young meat" and Kevin has latched onto him.

I don't want to give away too much of the story itself. I would like to comment on the overall effect of the book - written in 1974, it is like a time machine to that era. Reading this book is almost like being there and while the book is relatively formulaic, it is easy to see how this series has continued over time - the characters grip you and make you want to come back for more. I know I'm going to enjoy getting through this pile of Spenser books, which I have finally managed to accumulate. Anyone who likes a good detective novel will love Spenser.

Robert B. Parker and Tony Hillerman are the two authors I most consistently check when I go to a library or a bookstore. When it is a great day, one of the two has a new book. When it is a tremendous day, they both have a new one out and I have to decide which to read first!

In the meantime, I am making do by going back over their collected works as books on tape. I have a long drive to work every day and Spenser makes a very good ride-along companion. I have long-since read all of the older Spenser books, but the beautiful thing about a faulty memory is that the plot lines get a bit hazy over time and now I can enjoy them all over again!

Besides, it is always interesting to see how the reader interprets Spenser and the gang. One of the best to capture Spenser smart-aleck comments was Burt Reynolds, although his interpretation of Hawk was pleasurable, but questionable in terms of accent.

The reader for this version was a Michael Prichard. His interpretation of Spenser was neither here nor there, neither good nor bad. However, his reading of the Mrs. Bartlett was right on the money. Here's the scoop on Mrs. Bartlett: She and her husband hire Spenser to find her son. He is missing and a note has been sent to the Bartletts asking for $50,000 for his safe return. Mrs. Bartlett is an insipid, vapid twit of the first order. A woman more concerned with fashion than her child's safety. She hosts a dinner party in her house on the same day that a man is killed in it and during the time her son is missing. She is a woman who believes herself to be an artist because it gives her an excuse for her bad behavior. Prichard nails her so dead on that you wish you could reach through the radio speakers and smack her upside the head on at least half a dozen occassions.

So, how's the plot? Good thriller, although you could see the ending coming as soon as you hear the details of the missing boy's case. Of course, that could be some latent memories from when I read the book 10 years ago...

We meet Susan Silverman.

We meet Healey of the State Police (Prichard nails him too - I never noticed before that Healey was funny, but Prichard reads him as Spenser's straight man foil and I laughed out loud a couple of times).

There's plenty of Spenser's dogged style of detecting and plenty of smart comments.

This listener was struck as to how old Spenser really is - there is a lot of descriptive detail about clothing from the 1970s that reinforce that fact. Luckily, Spenser is forever middle aged but tough enough to take on the world and Susan Silverman is forever ageless and beautiful.

I give this one an A-

Follow any mention of the guinea pig in GOD SAVE THE CHILD. It's like a clue-magnet for unraveling character, plot, and purpose (or motives, however you want to call it).

Parker opens ths second Spenser novel with the P.I. droning in liquid narration, turning fool's gold into the functional lead of realism. Spenser artfully exposes his disgust for the husband/wife clients in his office. His descriptions of the outfits and arguments adorning these two seersucker, suburban bozos become a classic caricature setting for the husband/father's comment that his son took his guinea pig with him when he left home and disappeared.

That single observation, made by Roger Bartlett, that his son came home to get his pet before taking off, lifted him from the miasma his self-absorbed wife had immersed him into, beginning under his skin, continuing outward through the awkward, classless, tasteless clothing she had him don for the interview with Spenser. The only comment which cleared through the putrid artifice of that interview was Bartlett's mention of the guinea pig, which, of course, the wife, "mother" hated.

So, okay, Spenser, you were telling me that the only thing in that home which may have given warmth to this kid was that pet. And, the fact that the father noticed his child's attachment to it without rancor, began to paint the man out of the seersucker and into the quiet, subtle honesty of a man who cared about his son, but had probably not been able to demonstrate it.

The first two chapters were so impregnated with 70's ambiance (hey, yeah, this classic mystery was written then, and is still around to be bought and sold!), so packed with clues and character enrichment, I'm surprised this book didn't birth a horde of ...

Well ... actually, in a sense, it did ...

Decades later Parker's readers have a total of 33 Spenser novels to trudge through with high entertainment diligently dogging their heels.

This novel, along with the pilot, THE GODWULF MANUSCRIPT, felt to have been composed in a more sensual, molasses-type rhythm, gathering more dense, lush detail around settings, character enrichment, and classic mystery dynamics, than Parker's later Spenser offerings. I enjoy the early narrative labyrinth meandering as well as the later smooth, speedy jazz. Mostly I enjoy that Parker's writing style has rhythm. Not all novels do. All novels (by definition) have some sort of plotting, setting, narrative means, and characters. But, actually, not many writers have a discernable syntax rhythm, which draws a reader along on its natural, symphonic momentum, through dialogue and plot machinations. Most novels draw readers through a book more by baiting curiosity than by rhythm-ing their brain waves into a dance through literary prose cast so smoothly the reader might not notice the constantly effective undulations of literary lace. More likely, the reader notices he's collecting an increasing repertoire of questions about what (among a plethora of outrageous or cunning actions or commentaries) Spence is gonna do or say next.

I found myself looking forward to the next time I could pick up this novel, and I noticed that welcome surge of pleasure each time I reached for the book. Some mysteries require me to push through the plot at times, and I don't always feel that spark of anticipation as my hand reaches for a novel I've been into for a few sessions, when I know I'm going to have to force a focus, and reread a few paragraphs or pages prior to being caught up on the book's momentum, when I'm no longer required to apply effort.

Loved the way the local police chief responded to his lack of comprehension of Spenser's use of the
word, "candor." The extended means of coverup of lack of vocabulary easily and expertly exposed the breadth and width of Chief Trask's personality and pumped-up pomp. I'm not sure if I want to say Spenser is good or Parker is good. Sometimes I wonder where to draw the lines between them.

Oh my. Spenser meets Silverman, sets up their date, and moves into a relationship. What could I say but what Spenser did when he met her. Perfect. How cool that Spenser cooked dinner for Susan on their first date. And what a dinner. Maybe Nero Wolfe would have been impressed with Spenser's balsamic gourmet routines. Of course I wouldn't know. But, I know that I wallowed in the cooking prep scenes, and loved when Spenser noted that he hates when someone asks him for a recipe. Maybe he was a precursor to the Discovery Chef shows debuting in the 90's (if I remember the timing correctly) in which the flowing art of cooking took precedence over the craft and, possibly for the first time in cooking class history, no recipes were given, no lists of measured ingredients flashed on the TV screen (though they were made available on a web site for those who wanted that detail).

Just now (in 2006) reading the first Spenser novels, written in the 70's, is a treat of living, breathing cultural history. In fact, from this "now" perspective its easier to see how the Spenser series might be the best type of analog of the phenomenal cultural progression from then to now. It's easier to see why Parker was "set up" and compelled to include multiple tidbits, not only about what Spenser cooked for himself (lots of gourmet tomatoes, including pre-fame fried green ones), but what and how other characters ate, all of which surge into solidity in this second Spenser novel. Each character's eating choices and habits were telling, not only of 70's ambiance, but gave amazingly accurate insight into each plot walker. Not only that, the contrast (and sometimes lack of it) from the 70's to now, in eating habits and attitudes toward food and nurturing is mind blowing.

Eating/nurturing habits and attitudes might expose more about human culture and its historic development than any other significant factor, except possibly policies and proclivities toward sensitivity Vs cruelty.

And, Vic Harroway. His first appearance shows him not as a villain, but as a monster of the first (swamp) water. The way he jumped from his porch and landed, posed in baiting hostility, a few inches in front of Spenser, was so demonic in spirit, horns and tail were only a short nightmare away.

This book captivated me totally. I found myself rereading passages, not merely to seat them into memory, but to savor the flavor. When I arrived at the scene of Spenser beginning his supper prep of a pork tenderloin en croute, pausing to phone Silverman on impulse, and continuing the culinary coups up to and through her arrival at his apartment the first time, I was home. In a detective novel? Yeah.

Some readers have complained that the yummy, homey, cultured parts of Spenser take away from the expected P.I. mystique of the no life, a quarter-inch-away-from low life, lonely, solitary, macho man.

Okay. That's a valid addiction, and the availability of classic P.I. novels is readily enormous. Why should Parker create another one of those when he was obviously born to carry human culture through the transition from reefer madness to a prescription madness in which health is perverted beyond natural boundaries, and the joy of cooking and eating have been condemned into a phobia of the first water when 90% of the human population is suffering from chronic dehydration and related illnesses aggravated by 90% of the medical prescriptions which have become addictive. Many warnings for heart pills indicate that a heart attack will be induced if the pills are discontinued (not because the pill was successful at holding off heart failure, but because it is frighteningly addictive).

The redemptive generosity and rightness of the way Spenser brought antithetical elements and ugly character traits to catharsis in the denouement was to stand up, stomp feet, and cheer for.

Then, when Spenser and Susan had their concluding chat, I felt a "right on" slug come out of my psyche as Spenser offered his explanation for Harroway's appeal to Kevin, and for knocking that anti-hero off his pedestal, for the child's benefit.

Though I love Susan's character, her psychologist's hedging didn't have the brilliance of reality's uncompromising weight that Spenser's natural insights had.

From my canned predictions, if Susan's lucky, she'll be gleaning psychological truth not as much through her continued training and careful analysis, but through Spenser's struggles to understand his guilt and lack of it as he "boxes" his way through his P.I. cases. He'll be the one to grasp The Brass Ring of Wisdom. She'll be smart enough to share it, after nudging his elbow the quarter inch he wouldn't have had to reach it. What her training will be worth is its foundation to allow her to know he couldn't have done it without her contributions, and to see that he's right when he snaps the last puzzle piece into his Code of Ethics. Will that happen in # 38 or 39 in the series? In this prediction I'm not diminishing the woman; elevating the man. I'm just honoring the fact that Parker's the boxer/poet who's out there on the front line daily, regularly getting his ego bashed and nose in jeopardy.

The last line was a literary killer. I'm meaning "killer" there in the colloquial sense of being an awesomely appropriate "final sentence" to wrap the second novel in a detective series which would evolve to solidly span 3 decades. Or, would a more accurate description be that the Spenser series constructed a "bridge over (the) troubled waters" of 3 decades?

I'm very much anticipating MORTAL STAKES, Parker's third Spenser statement in the ongoing cultural conversation. I gotta see how his relationship with Susan progresses. Gotta see how his views of life's rights and wrongs continue to purge and clarify. And, it doesn't hurt that his plotting is riveting and his style is smooth jazz. Usually I don't seek books which are toooo riveting. But, how nice to have this one magnetize itself to my fingertips just enough that it flew into my hand each time I reached for it, and the pages began thumbing themselves just as my eyes passed the last word at bottom right. Now, if I can get the book to hold itself up, I'll have it made. Maybe I'll even be on the gravy train (choose your triteness).

Robert B. Parker, you're one heck of a phenomenon.

Linda G. Shelnutt

In this second Spenser "novel of suspense," our hero is trying to find Kevin Bartlett, a fifteen-year old who has disappeared from his parent's affluent home out in the Boston suburbs. The parents and the local cop think Kevin is just another runaway, but the fact that the kid left with just his guinea pig makes Spenser suspicious. However, when the ransom note shows up in the form of a cartoon strip and the kidnappers make a phone call with a jingle, things are only beginning to become confusing. Add to this the fact that the Bartletts are not the world's happiest couple and the suspicions just keep piling up for Spenser.

"God Save the Child" is a vast improvement over Parker's first Spenser novel, simply because he has reigned in the character a bit by doing a relatively simple thing: providing a couple of characters who can appreciate Spenser's skewed sense of humor and more importantly understand his skills and devotion. The first character is Lieutenant Healy, a State Cop willing to use Spenser instead of doing the stereotypical real cop distaste for private detectives. The second, of course, is Susan Silverman, making her first appearance in the series. The two character click and know pretty much from the first moment they have found someone special in the other, which is a welcome relief after Spenser's sexual escapades in the first novel.

Add to this the fact that Spenser succeeds as much by persistence as he does by virtue of being smarter than everybody else on the scene. The final scenes are not only exciting for the action they contain, but I also appreciate what the climax reveals about the collection of unhappy people this story is about. Although it has been a quarter of a century since "God Save the Child" was written, the period references are relatively inconsequential. As always, Parker's novels are a quick and easy read, perfect for those who live the commuter life.