Spenser and his buddy Hawk are helping a couple of troubled friends (i.e., they're working without a fee). The first case involves the denial of tenure for Professor Robinson Nevins. While tenure meetings are always closed-door affairs, Nevins assumes that the recent suicide of graduate student Prentice Lamont (who some claim was having an affair with Nevins) ruined his chances for a coveted permanent position. Spenser and Hawk cut a brawl-strewn path through the members of the tenure committee on their way to the surprising truth of the Nevins case.
The other investigation pits Spenser against the unknown stalker of K.C. Roth. Spenser's girlfriend, Susan, has known K.C. for a while, and while the PI finds Ms. Roth a bit melodramatic, he's always eager to help a damsel in distress. The only problem is that after he's apparently resolved the case, K.C. begins a little stalking of her own - of Spenser.
'Robert B Parker's Spenser is one of the best private detectives in fiction '
- Sunday Telegraph
'It's nice to know that after 25 years of playing it smart in Robert B. Parker's novels, Spenser doesn't have all the answers.'
- Marilyn Stasio, New York Times [read the full review]
It's nice to know that after 25 years of playing it smart in Robert B. Parker's novels, Spenser doesn't have all the answers. In Hush Money, the Boston private eye is thrown by the lethal combination of sex (straight, gay, kinky) and politics (racial, sexual, academic) that erupts at a certain university in Cambridge when an African-American professor is implicated in the suicide of a militantly gay graduate student. In a situation that adds to his discomposure, Spenser finds himself being sexually hounded by a woman whom he has just rescued from the similarly unhealthy attentions of a former boyfriend.
The plot is a problem, falling apart when Spenser fails to ask a few screamingly obvious questions, and the characters feel phony, running to stereotypes of the mad-dog white supremacist, the intellectually dishonest black radical and the academic geek. Despite its flaws, the story forces Spenser to take on the heroic task of examining his conscience for prejudicial attitudes about black people, gay people and female people who try to rape him. He's a better man for the soul-searching, and so is his friend Hawk, who is moved to share an intimate secret about his past. ''It's like suddenly discovering Beowulf's childhood,'' marvels Spenser's beloved Susan, who softens her own ice-cool image with an inelegant but humanizing fit of jealousy.
Marilyn Stasio, New York Times