"Mr. Spenser, you are a little man in a big arena. You simply don't matter."

With that comment fans of Spenser know that he's going to be digging in his heels and pull even harder at all of the loose ends until he finds something he can use. That is both the beauty and the weakness of the Spenser novels - they are formulaic. Spenser has a routine and this one touches all points (help from Hawk with a tail? Check. Vinny Morris brought in to back up Hawk? Check. Bounce his case off of Susan for a new perspective? Check. Witty commentary? Check. Both the cops and the bad guys irritated with Spenser? Check. It's predictable but quite enjoyable.

The case is interesting and goes all over the place. The only real problem I had with this audiobook presentation is Joe Mantegna as the reader. Mantegna does a solid job of reading - his diction is impeccable, he can deliver a smart-aleck comment pretty well but his range of different voices is limited and his Susan Silverman voice sounded like Carey Grant to me. A four-star book is reduced to a total of three stars by the narration.

The best part of this novel is the dialogue, some of it, although I find Hawk a bit tiresome and overdone. The worst part is the contrived plot. Perhaps there are too many dead bodies, to the point that the initial murder loses its importance and focus.

Spenser is not my favorite detective, I might add. He's tough like Mike Hammer, smart talking like Lawrence Block heroes, egotistical, boastful, and never loses a fight. A few flaws might help him.

This novel started to drag about halfway and I could scarcely wait to finish it, not to find out whodunit but to be dunwithit.

This is my 2d Spenser novel. At first I found him interesting and I even said complex. Huh. The book character is definitely more nuanced than the tv character but almost everything is more nuanced than tv.

I still enjoyed Spenser and Hawk but now find Susan is just a bit too annoying. The plot was okay and the characters were forgettable. If I read more Spenser novels they will have to be much earlier versions than this one.

I'm a true fan of Bob Parker but I kept wondering where his mind had wandered off to while writing this particular Spenser episode. The book jacket specifically points out the Nathans' argument at a party just prior to his death (an argument vitriolic enough to elicit him slapping her), yet it's never even discussed in the book (other than to casually mention it in passing in only one sentence). If it was important enough to put on the book jacket, why wasn't it important enough to be delved into in the meat of the book? And if Mary is such a nitwit, how could she muster the gumption to even have an argument w/ her husband? There were just too many unanswered questions (let's don't forget the whole Brink murder episode that was never really explained either). I would have preferred fewer paths to explore at the expense of detail.

When Rita Fiore calls Spenser in to help build a defense case for a young widow, Spenser doesn't know what he is getting in for. Young Mrs. Smith is about as smart as a door-knob and the case that she murdered her much older husband seems open and shut. However, Spenser smells a rat and, as is typical of his sleuthing style, just keeps sticking his nose into every crack he can find until the death threats start coming.

Entertaining, and full of the typical twists and turns that make reading the Spenser novels so much fun, I found this one hard to put down. Not to be missed!

Parker can be up and down, but this is one of his best later efforts.

Typical Parker novel. He spends more time decribing clothes on people and not on other details. The book starts in the spring and seems to last a couple weeks and is in the fall when it ends. Not so much a mystery as just waiting to see how many he will kill and see whats in plain sight.