Like a lot of big, strong men built for heavy work, Robert B. Parker's hero, Spenser, has been known to goof off on the job when he's bored. But the Boston private eye redeems himself in School Days, energized by a case that demands more brains than braggadocio and challenged by a client who could really use a hero.

There's been a horrific shooting at a private school in one of the city's most exclusive suburbs - seven students and teachers killed, eight wounded, the entire student body traumatized. The doting grandmother of one of the two boys being held by the police hires Spenser to prove her grandson is innocent. But the kid has confessed, and Spenser is inclined to believe him. What he won't accept, and rightly distrusts, is the lynch-mob mentality of everyone in town, from cops and school administrators to the boys' own parents. "Everybody wants this to go away," he says, cutting through the cant about healing and closure and getting on with one's life. As a troubled defense lawyer puts it, in the blunt idiom Parker uses when he's worked up about a particularly ugly instance of social injustice: "They hate these kids for reminding them that it ain't quite Eden."

Any new installment in Parker's long-running series starring tough, wisecracking Boston PI Spenser is a pleasure, and this time out high-maintenance girlfriend Susan Silverman is out of town, giving readers unfettered Spenser face time. The wealthy Lily Ellsworth hires Spenser to prove the innocence of her grandson, Jared Clark, accused of a Columbine High School-style shooting that has left five students and two teachers dead. Jared has confessed to the crime, and Spenser faces major opposition from local law enforcement officials, school authorities, dysfunctional parents, opposing lawyers and deadly gang-bangers. As always, Spenser solves the case in a surprising manner, shoots some bad guys and has several attractive women offer him sex, all of which he handles in his proficient, wisenheimer way. Susan's German shorthaired pointer Pearl gets a lot of attentive babysitting, but longtime sidekick Hawk is nowhere in evidence. Those who have stuck with Spenser as Parker invented (and set loose) other case-crackers will be rewarded once again with another solid installment in this fine, enduring series. (Sept.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Just when you thought the Spenser saga (Cold Service, 2005, etc.) had tailed off into attitude and wryly clipped trash talk, Parker socks another home run with a tale ripped from not-so-recent headlines. Two students in ski masks executed seven people at Dowling Academy before one of them, Wendell Grant, surrendered to police. The authorities are convinced the other one was Jared Clark, the buddy Grant gave up to them when they pressured him. So why is blue-blooded Lily Ellsworth so convinced her grandson is innocent that she's offered a pot of money to Spenser to prove it? As the dean of Boston private eyes sets out to question the interested parties-and he gets stonewalled so consistently by cops and administrators who want "closure" and "healing" that the biggest mystery is how he's ever going to find anything out-one thing is clear: Jared sure looks guilty. Spenser's dogged attempts to learn where the killers got their weapons and the training to use them leads him to a student hangout where the kids are even more laconic than he is, a bunch of gangbangers even more prone to violence, and inevitably more murder. Given such a bitter harvest, it's no wonder he gets paid off and sent packing. His response is merely to change his focus to the question of why Jared, a slow, inoffensive kid who, despite the testimony of dishy school psychologist Beth Ann Blair, doesn't seem to fit the profile of the classic disaffected teen killer, would have joined forces with a bully like Wendell Clark. The shattering answer shows that Parker's willing to borrow from more than one set of real-life headlines. Spenser's most wide-ranging, deeply felt and penetrating case in years, one that will leave youwondering why, as one kid says, violence doesn't break out at schools more often.