Another Robert B. Parker classic. His Spenser is original, entertaining and always leaves you wanting more. Highly recommend this author for great reading.

Robert B Parker is the greatest author of all time as measured by quality and quantity. Hemingway, Dostoyevski, Faulkner, et. al. wrote 2 or 3 great books, each of which even Mr. Parker would acknowledge superior to any of his works. But no author has ever consistently produced high quality entertainment virtually every year for over 30 years! No one. This book is not his best, but it is a good example of how he can call upon old characters from former books and weave a new tale of humor, suspense and just plain entertainment. Raymond Chandler said his objective was to write mystery novels that readers could enjoy even if the last ten pages were missing. Parker has acheived that objective more than 30 times.

I've read most of the Spenser novels, and TAMING A SEA HORSE is probably in my bottom five. The thirteenth Spenser novel isn't terrible, but it pales in comparison with most of the other entires in the series.

The story involves Spenser looking for April Kyle, a character from an earlier Spenser novel entitled CEREMONY, who has fallen under the charms of a charismatic pimp. Most of the novel consists of Spenser confronting people, making wisecracks, and then roughing them up. Throughout all this violent confrontation, Spenser hardly breaks a sweat. He is never really in danger, and this book has few genuine thrills.

TAMING A SEA HORSE is pretty much a by-the-numbers effort, and the plot has an over-the-top quality that makes the book hard to believe. For example, you have to believe that April Kyle's pimp is a student at Julliard, which is the top music school in the world. A lot of the later Spenser novels have this fantastical quality, which makes Parker's more recent work difficult to thoroughly enjoy.

If you've never read Parker before, you may find TAMING A SEA HORSE to be mildly enjoyable. But my advice is to stick with Parker's first ten or so books in the Spenser series, which are by far the strongest ones.

In the 13th in the Spenser series, Patricia Utley - a high class madame with a call girl service in New York City - contacts Spenser because April Kyle - who we first met in Ceremony - has gone missing again. When Spenser begins to look for her, he runs straight into a brick wall of lies and threats that have him running from Maine to St. Thomas looking for clues when the one link he did find - another hooker who had apparently known April - ended up murdered, along with her pimp.

The action never lets up and we're treated to a lot of peeks into the world of the professional sex trade. It is frequently not very pretty.

A strong entry in the Spenser series. A recommend from me.

I'm ashamed to admit this about my reading weakness. I did overcome it, given full use of the gift of Parker's skill as an author. The confession:

The first few paragraphs of TAMING A SEA-HORSE worked more as the wrong end of a magnet than a draw into the story. My immediate, automatic response was I didn't want to immerse my emotions again into the heartbreaking, depressing world of Patricia Utley and April Kyle.

And then the save:

Reading into the story a couple pages, I was hooked into Spenser's world and cares. I wanted to know why April had gone to the different call agency, and how Spenser might convince her to return to Utley's more realistic, kinder "retirement program." And, the conversation with Utley was engrossing, about the various angles of Call Girls' dreams, the sour and the creme.

I was also caught by Spenser's description of compulsions and controls (successes and failures) of his rampant appetites, in this case for martinis over lunch, through lunch, concluding with a healthy cherry cheesecake wallow.

Of course Spenser's first conversation with April over a noon lunch, which was breakfast for her, was full of reader bait, as was his first exchange with April's high-brow musician pimp. With Spenser's satiric takes on the seedy sides of NYC ambiance swirled into the mix, I willingly gave up any resistance to sinking into the unique plot mix in book # 13 in the series. Given the sensitive ending (and the increasingly engrossing ride to it, youthful shrugs included) I'm really glad that resistance would have been futile here.

Susan and Hawk didn't show up until about half through the plot, but their scenes were prime, especially if a reader has come upon them in sequence, through the storms of the previous novels. A special playful newness to Susan and Spenser's relationship had emerged, and I could feel the subtle pride and quiet warmth in Hawk, which had expanded due to the intense intimacy of soul ripping situations through which they had passed in absolute commitment to each other, in previous novels.

Due to the delay of entrance of Susan and Hawk, though, readers were again allowed the ambiance of the private eye walking alone, for another while. Instead of reeking of loneliness, though, this time disgust and frustration fumed in the solitary detective who realistically makes very little progress in his games, enduring endless hours and hour-packed days of tedious observation, and expensive exploration into seeming dead ends. Parker does Spenser's boredom shuffle to perfection.

The plot heat-up (from the appealing gumshoe dragging) was gradual in a satisfying way (with literary style and bits of great humor), and effective in easing me into reading a few hours in the middle of the night... thinking I would just read long enough to get sleepy and fall back asleep. Sure. Finished the book first, then went back to sleep, after another 30 minutes tumbling the story around in my mind, feeling a healing contentment about what Spenser accomplished in this one, even if it was just a novel.

I was haunted by knowing, first hand from my experiences in police work, about the young girls who would never have a Spenser to save them. Some of them would have someone; some of them would somehow save themselves.

Linda Shelnutt