When Susan's ex-husband, Brad, appears after a decades-long absence, nearly broke and the object of a sexual-harassment suit, Spenser reluctantly agrees to help. As he investigates the circumstances surrounding the suit, he discovers that fund-raiser Brad is swimming in very deep water: mobsters, who were using his fund-raising campaigns to launder money, have discovered he was cooking the already cooked books and aren't at all pleased. The deeper Spenser digs, the more bodies he uncovers and the more culpable Brad appears to be.
'Parker's dialogue is always cutting and laugh out loud funny '
- Donna Leon,, The Sunday Times
'Robert B Parker's Spenser is one of the best private detectives in fiction '
- Sunday Telegraph
'Parker gives these two bruisers [Spenser and Hawk] plenty of room for their verbal bobbing and weaving, generously setting up great scenes at the gym, on various stakeouts and in one seriously tough bar in the South End.'
- Marilyn Stasio, New York Times [read the full review]
Spring comes to Boston in Robert B. Parker's new Spenser mystery, Sudden Mischief, bringing the ducks and the tulips and the swan boats, along with a crisis in the private eye's idyllic relationship with the annoyingly perfect Susan Silverman. The first cracks appear when Susan asks her lover to rescue her ex-husband from a multiple sexual harassment suit - a boon that would test any knight's mettle. Spenser does the noble thing and disproves the bogus charges against Brad Sterling, a fund-raiser for charities that never see a dime from the gala events he stages and a charming rat with women. But instead of thanking her hero for his selfless efforts on behalf of this clown, Susan snaps and snarls at him and goes into an interminably dull analysis of her attraction to 'inappropriate men.'
Although the story's romantic elements are a drag on the criminal mayhem activated by Brad's shady business dealings, nothing inhibits Spenser and Hawk, his menacing sidekick, from swapping manly repartee. Parker gives these two bruisers plenty of room for their verbal bobbing and weaving, generously setting up great scenes at the gym, on various stakeouts and in one seriously tough bar in the South End. Not a bird or a duck in sight; but with this kind of dialogue in bloom, it must be spring.
Marilyn Stasio, New York Times
'Robert B Parker's PI's are in the nobly stoic mould of Marlowe, The Continental Op and Lew Archer '
- Uncut