The Professional, by Robert B. Parker
Oct. 11th, 2009 12:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aQuickly upon the heels of Chasing the Bear, I got the brand-new Spenser book, The Professional (from the library, as ever).
In short: not one of my favorites.
Oh, sure it had the great Parker dialogue and the great characters of Spenser, Hawk, and Susan, which are always are a joy to read. I read it in just a few days. But, it was even more pointless and meandering than most Spenser books.
In The Professional, Spenser gets a job to stop a guy from blackmailing some women that the guy had had affairs with. Spenser can't do the job, because the guy doesn't give in, but Spenser stays obsessed with the psychology of the guy and his victims and continues watching over them long after the case ends ... and eventually some other things start to happen, but in them Spenser is more of a witness than an active participant.
Over the years Parker has gotten more and more interested in psychology and what makes people tick. I mentioned that the ongoing psychological discussions of Chasing the Bear was its main weakness. Similarly here Parker tried to put out a whole book centered around some psychological sketches, and it became obvious that it was less a mystery and more a ... whatever this is that Parker is writing.
Hopefully the next Spenser role will have him taking a more active role, and maybe actually doing something he's getting paid for, rather than acting as a detective dilettante.
In short: not one of my favorites.
Oh, sure it had the great Parker dialogue and the great characters of Spenser, Hawk, and Susan, which are always are a joy to read. I read it in just a few days. But, it was even more pointless and meandering than most Spenser books.
In The Professional, Spenser gets a job to stop a guy from blackmailing some women that the guy had had affairs with. Spenser can't do the job, because the guy doesn't give in, but Spenser stays obsessed with the psychology of the guy and his victims and continues watching over them long after the case ends ... and eventually some other things start to happen, but in them Spenser is more of a witness than an active participant.
Over the years Parker has gotten more and more interested in psychology and what makes people tick. I mentioned that the ongoing psychological discussions of Chasing the Bear was its main weakness. Similarly here Parker tried to put out a whole book centered around some psychological sketches, and it became obvious that it was less a mystery and more a ... whatever this is that Parker is writing.
Hopefully the next Spenser role will have him taking a more active role, and maybe actually doing something he's getting paid for, rather than acting as a detective dilettante.