ROUGH WEATHER: A Spenser Novel
Robert B. Parker
Putnam Adult
Mystery
ISBN: 9780399155192
For many, fall is the season of falling leaves, shorter days and cooler nights. But for mystery fans, fall is the time of year for a new Spenser novel from the dean of American crime fiction, Robert B. Parker. ROUGH WEATHER is the 36th book featuring Spenser, the wise-cracking Boston detective whose first name we still have never discovered. Not that it matters at this point.
ROUGH WEATHER will not disappoint. The series is as fresh and pertinent now as it was when Parker published the first Spenser novel, THE GODWOLF MANUSCRIPT, in 1973. Indeed, in recent years, the series has taken a darker, more noir-like turn while still giving readers everything they have come to love and expect from Spenser: his wit, his strength, his sense of justice.
Parker did not come to the mystery writing business the traditional way. The pulps were long gone by the time he arrived, and he was not a newspaperman. Instead, he got a PhD in literature from Boston University. His dissertation studied the private eyes of an earlier age created by pulp giants like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. These writers brought the private eye into 20th-century America. But Chandler’s Philip Marlowe series consisted of just seven novels. Parker’s Spenser series is now over five times longer than Chandler’s. And in the process, Parker has taken the American private eye into the 21st century and created one of the greatest fictional characters in American literature.
The America of 2008 is far different from the America of 1973, but at the start of ROUGH WEATHER we find Spenser in his usual setting, staring out the window of his office at the young women walking by on Berkeley Street. And then the story kicks in. Parker writes:
“I was thinking about sex when there was a delicate knock on my door. Immediately after the knock, the door opened and a woman came in for whom I was in the perfect state of mind. She was a symphony of thick auburn hair, even features, wide mouth, big eyes, stunning figure, elegant clothes, expensive perfume, and what people who would talk that way would call breeding.”
Chandler could not have written it better.
The mysterious woman, Heidi Bradshaw, hires Spenser to be her bodyguard at the wedding of her daughter, which will be held on a private island off the Massachusetts coast. The island has its own private security force, so it is not clear why she needs Spenser, except, she points out, “as a kind of balance to my insecurity.” Spenser responds, “An insecurity guard.”
Right from the start, the novel follows the noir credo that nothing is what it seems. And sure enough, a hurricane hits the island right as the wedding begins, which coincides as well with the arrival of a highly trained commando team that kills the groom and reverend at the altar and then kidnaps the bride. Spenser is in the first row with his longtime love, Dr. Susan Silverman. He manages to save Susan and kill one of the bad guys but not before the bride is whisked away as the storm lifts.
As if this was not bad enough, the lead kidnapper just happens to be the “Gray Man,” the shadowy CIA-type operative who is the only one who ever came close to killing Spenser several years back. Why is he involved in a kidnapping? And the bride’s father and stepfather have money, as does the groom, the heir to a pharmaceutical fortune. But after the bride is snatched, no ransom note appears. What kind of kidnapping is this?
Spenser is officially off the case, but that has never stopped him before --- and it does not stop him now. He has to get involved. His knight-errant code has been violated. Even though he does not know why he was hired by Heidi, six people were killed on his watch. Spenser simply says, “I wasn’t very useful.” He has to find the girl and solve the case.
But the presence of the Gray Man puts Spenser’s life at risk. It is pretty much understood that the Gray Man is the only person alive who can kill Spenser (this is his third appearance in the series). The threat to Spenser brings in Hawk, his faithful thug sidekick. The banter between them is one of the great treats of this series.
“‘And so you been doing what you do, which is poke around in the hornet’s nest until you irritate a hornet,’ Hawk said.
“‘Yes,’
“‘Not a bad technique,’ Hawk said, ‘long as you got me to walk behind you.’”
Indeed, the Gray Man does try to kill Spenser and the bodies pile up. Meanwhile, the mother of the bride, Heidi, shows very little interest in the fate of her own daughter, and other players involved just wish Spenser would go away.
When the Spenser series started, Spenser was a veteran of the Korean War. There have been a lot of wars involving America since then. The series acknowledges that Spenser is aging but not that he and Hawk are men in their 70s beating up tough guys half their age. That is not the point. The series stays fresh with timely and timeless hard-boiled stories and brilliant writing.
People still kill for greed, sex and power --- the reasons they always did. And it is not just the Gray Man involved here, but a gray world where sometimes, maybe even most of the time, people die for nothing. But that does not mean Spenser is going to stop trying to find justice his own way.
ROUGH WEATHER packs an explosive punch. It is the perfect book for a lazy fall weekend. Parker is a great writer at the absolute top of his game. Reading his books is like being in the room watching Sinatra sing.
--- Reviewed by Tom Callahan
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