A cheating husband and a wayward wife provide Spenser with an unconventional and dangerous surveillance job
When Marlene Cowley hires Spenser to see if her husband, Trent, is cheating on her, he encounters more than he bargained for: Not only does he find a two-timing husband, but a second investigator as well, hired by the husband to look after his wife. As a result of their joint efforts, Spenser soon finds himself investigating both individual depravity and corporate corruption.
It seems the folks in the Cowley's circle have become enamoured of radio talk-show host Darrin O'Mara, whose views on Courtly Love are clouding some already fuzzy minds with the notion of cross-connubial relationships. O'Mara's brand of sex therapy is unconventional at best, unlawful-and deadly-at worst. Then a murder at Kinergy, where Trent Cowley is CFO, sends Spenser in yet another direction. Apparently, the unfettered pursuit of profit has a price.
'Few detectives could drag Chrétien de Troyes and courtly love into a case without sounding pretentious, but Spenser pulls it off. Perfect, undemanding summer reading. '
- Joan Smith, Sunday Times [read the full review]
'Spenser is one of the best private detectives in fiction'
- Sunday Telegraph
'another combination of wry satire and sly action in his thirty-first mystery starring Spenser, the Boston private eye'
- Connie Fletcher, Booklist [read the full review]
Parker, declared a Grand Master in 2002 by the Mystery Writers of America, delivers another combination of wry satire and sly action in his thirty-first mystery starring Spenser, the Boston private eye. This time he employs to devastating effect one of his signature devices - an observation on how someone dresses or walks into a room, or a few lines of dialogue between the victim and his hero - to fillet the greed and arrogance of corporate types.
At novel's outset, Parker indulges in Keystone Kops comedy played out by private eyes. A distraught wife hires him to tail her husband. Surveillance turns complex and comic when Spenser finds that the husband is having his wife watched; an outside party is having both husband and wife watched; and Spenser himself is being tailed. Spenser is soon being watched by the Boston PD, since he is sitting in the lobby when the husband he's following is shot to death in his office. The action takes a more serious turn here, as Spenser is hired by the energy-selling corporation's CEO to investigate the murder. Of course, Spenser uncovers big-time corruption. Longtime love and psychologist Susan Silverman figures in as a commentator on the action.
Spenser sidekick Hawk seems more like a vestigial remnant from other books than a realistic character here. Spenser swaggers a bit too much, and the dialogue can get one-two punch formulaic, but even so, Parker still runs at the front of the private-eye pack.
Connie Fletcher, Booklist