Spenser takes on two cases in "Hush Money," both as favors and both free. First Hawk comes to him with a request to help out a man named Robinson Nevins, who believes he was denied tenure inappropriately. Apparently a rumor was started that Robinson was responsible for the suicide of a young man; the rumor being that they were romantically linked and when Robinson broke it off, the young man (Lamont Prentice) killed himself. When Spenser begins to investigate, however, he quickly uncovers evidence that not only was the death not a suicide, but also that Lamont was running a blackmail ring where he would threaten to out closeted homosexuals unless they paid.

Secondly, Susan asks Spenser to help a friend of hers - KC - who is being stalked. Spenser has to discover who is stalking KC while at the same time fending off her ever-increasingly obsessive advances.

Plenty of twists and turns make this quite a story. The despicable Amir Abdullah made for some great comedy relief at times - at least I got a lot of laughs out of him. I'm not certain he was meant to be funny, but I found him to be.

Very good book. Lots of action twists, moral turns, ethnic turns, action and a tidbit of the human side of Hawk. Typical Parker with multiple plots, subplots and a . . . motivated woman.

While this Spenser novel follows the same formula as the others, there is one significant difference. In this one, we learn much more about the enigmatic Hawk. When he encounters a man that tried to sexually abuse him as a child, Hawk roughs him up, an action that puzzles Spenser. Hawk explains, describing some of the events of his youth and how he became a boxer. There is less wisecracking in this story as there is in some of the others, which is unfortunate. The best Spenser novels are those where he interacts with officers Quirk and Belsen, which seems to bring out the best in wisecracking repartee.
Spenser is once again the noble crusader, risking his life to help a friend, in this case Hawk. The man who took Hawk off the streets has a son who was denied tenure at a university. Believing it to have been unfair, the man denied tenure goes to Hawk, who goes to Spenser. This begins a trek into the undercurrents of gay life and the hypocrisy of so many of those who consider it a scourge of civilization. There is also a second plot line that has a woman very aggressively pursuing Spenser in an attempt to get him to engage in sex. Like the gallant man he is Spenser maneuvers the situation so that Susan is given the opportunity to deal with it. Which is does, in a manner that impresses Spenser.
This is not the best Spenser novel, parts of the plot are a bit too exaggerated. Nevertheless, it is very good, and is one that I will probably reread in a few years.

This one began with a smoothly captivating, yawning weather "report" brought to the reader through the ambiance of a baseball game singing over radio waves. Spenser was bemoaning the contrast of slower ages passed, when a sports announcer could linger leisurely around springtime baseball news, between sudden screams of stand-up-and-cheer, bat cracking action. But, that day, as Spenser narrated, the radio voice was sliding so fast through a long list of ads, the endless promotions threatened to overrun notice of ongoing fly-balls busting and bursting through air.

A few of the early chapters took off slowly, mesmerizing-ly, with Spenser's sensual briefs of weather reports giving lazy home-runs to the sleepy emergence of spring, as money was extorted subtly in underplots.

Loved the way Parker posed Spenser slipping into such a still mode of respect as to consciously quiet his breathing as Hawk opened an accounting of a childhood experience with one of the suspects who had triggered a brief loss of control in Hawk's steel-studded cool.

The dual cases in HUSH MONEY, one a favor for Hawk, the other a favor for Susan, were a switch from the usual focus on a single client case, which has been the deal in the 7 Spenser novels I've read, with each additional one making me more glad I have around 26 left to read, with Parker still penning posh. The alternation of cases was a tantalizing treat of contrasts, especially as I wondered if a connection might emerge between them, even though the way each was introduced would, in "reality" cause them to have no cross over, no bleeding through, as it were.

Well, except that in the real world serendipity and synchronicity exist. And in fiction there's always the Right Brain at work, which causes authors to slip in amazingly cohesive, subtle themes which they weren't aware of as they were writing, maybe weren't aware of after the book was published and selling for a few decades. Then a sneaky reviewer comes along and sees a shiny silk thread woven through the words, visible only after the activation of some type of predestined ray to The Spectrum of Light, brought into reality by a time-release "code" built into the Laws of Physics during Day Two of Implementation of The Plan of The Genius.

Okay, all right. This is a P.I. novel. It isn't sci fi. But. Physical Reality is. Sci fi. It's the best sci fi in the evolution of life. What I'm v-rooming and v-rooming and v-rooming to say is that two totally disconnected cases which a detective is working simultaneously, whether in fiction or in reality, might have Right Brain, serendipitous connections. And, I, of course, having written a series of sci fi novels, with a couple of stand alone sci fi mss in progress, have a brain which looks around every fictional word for clues to the glue which connects seemingly unrelated happen stances.

So. For a time in my reading of HUSH MONEY I admit to having wondered if a seemingly nice, quiet lady in the gay (was he?) professor's case may have actually been the stalker in the "rescue me" conniving female case.

Most readers expect that, in the world of The Novel (feel very free to read my review of James A. Michener's book of that title) sub plots will religiously cooperate toward a tied-together denouement, ultimately joining with the main plot in an ever twisting vine of cranial convolutions contrived within the mind of the author.

The main theme of this novel, under which all the machinations play, seems to be a dramatization of sexual variations among various levels of human purity and pollution, with these variations brought into a cross-stitching pattern laid over stereotypes and sub-cultural demands, with the saffron thread of hypocrisy overcoming all within a tight weave of labyrinth proportions.

It was amazing how Parker brought out the admirable and the putrid within multiple types of sexual exchanges among multifaceted characters. But, KC Roth took the cake of the conniving female. As Parker described her, she had so many layers of contrivances, if they were all peeled away, nothing would be left. And yet, Spenser found a simple, natural a way to "save" KC from her "rescue me" contrived cries. However, after that didn't last, Spenser had to call in Susan, the "Big Gun," who played a few extraordinarily delightful scenes in this one.

The reader is required to make do with only one cooking scene rearing a fry pan and pasta pot in HUSH MONEY, but what an entry! My menu of it would drool in describing, "Black Bean Linguine, with the beans olive-oil-sauteed with garlic cloves, laced with Sherry, finished with fresh cilantro."

Yep, "Leftovers R Us." Given his perpetual ability to take whatever ingredients are at hand and gourmet the heck out of them, Spenser began joking about his new catering business taking over his not having a single clue to chew.

Spenser again ran through his evolving ethics of "to kill (in cold blood but with `just cause') or not to kill." And he made no bones about Hawk's willingness to kill (without a license, sans cultural sanction) human vermin. As usual, creativity won, and Spenser found ways of less bloodletting to solve injustices and end problems, which sometimes required more than one application of solutions. With two cases to juggle in HUSH MONEY the plots became so convoluted I wasn't sure how/if they interconnected, except to make the point that race, color, creed, and sexual persuasions had nothing to do with a person being a pig, or human with integrity (I don't mean to denigrate the cleaner species).

Layers upon layers of excellent pig interviews exposed their stench so plainly the pages reeked (entertainingly, of course). With that setting established in stinky spades, when a real human being stepped into a session with Spenser the fresh air was so evident my eyes literally widened (and quit watering). I was hugely impressed that Tommy (David) Harmon seemed so absolutely real. I've met only a small number of people like him in my life. Every word of dialogue in that interview refreshingly set David aside and above, but one reply stood out. It was David's reply to Spenser's repeated ease-setting promise that, in his line of business he wouldn't get far if he blabbed heavy secrets divulged in an interview.

Spenser said: "I can avoid mentioning your name."

Harmon replied: "If I said it, I'm responsible for it."

Being responsible for everything one has ever blabbed or written, wow. Given my overboard spontaneity, and foot-in-mouth tendency, I've had some tough chewing eating certain words I've spewed without proper clues. Ohhhh. Myyyyyy.

I'll conclude by quoting my nephew Lonnie, with his adorable 5 years-old voice still speaking clearly in my mind nearly 40 years later. He had been spouting off at the mouth into my tape recorder for several minutes when he stopped suddenly, face glowing, and grinned around the words, "Shut my mouth."

Linda G. Shelnutt

Typical Spenser. witty, hard nosed, careing, and plenty of other characters to play off of. Keeps you turning the pages