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I turned 47 in February, so it was high time for a mid-life crisis. Rather than searching for an inappropriately young girlfriend or impulse buying a European sports car, I read all the books by Robert B. Parker starring Spenser, the tough but fair Boston private eye who saves lost souls and kills bad guys with the help with his girlfriend, refined therapist Susan Silverman, and his partner, the fashionable and street-wise Hawk. InRobert B. Both Marlowe and Spenser were Elizabethan poets. The Godwulf Manuscript was a hit, and Parker would go on to write 38 more Spenser books credited with helping revive and define the genre. The novels of Agatha Christie The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) Rex Stout are still around, dated as they may be, while someone like Erle Stanley Gardner would be almost entirely forgotten if it were not for the television productions starring Perry Mason. From my vantage point it seems like the posthumous reputation of Donald E. Westlake keeps holding some ground, while the work of his peer Ed McBain is receding into history. Will Robert B. Parker stand the test of time? What was edgy or advanced in the s or s is trite or even embarrassing today, and presumably that condition will only worsen as society keeps evolving. If the books do stay in circulation, it is going to be for witty dialogue between opponents, the rise and fall of tension in a fight scene, the technical details of how to take on armed posse when the opponents already know to expect trouble. Nobody could The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) a tough guy action sequence like Robert B. You want to call it toxic masculinity? During a mid-life crisis, you might need some goddamn toxic masculinity, and as soon as I put down one Spenser, I was eager to pick up another. An early success is The Judas Goat The waiting itself is a funny and dramatic sequence, and it is a relief when the guns finally start firing. If I had to chose one Spenser title as the best, I might go for Playmates Parker occasionally enacts joyful revenge against the culture of high education, a culture he left behind after becoming a successful novelist. As if you could make falsehood true by richly said restatement. Parker and The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) Creation of an American Hero is valuable. This just fine, for the Western is a perfect format for a tough guy action series with an unwavering moral center. Potshot literally puts Spenser in charge of cleaning up a Western town, with a climatic shootout that pits seven against forty, just like an old John Ford movie. I first read Taming A Sea-Horse as a teenager, more or less when the book was new. During my recent reading, I was wondering when that chapter would turn up. To set it up: Spenser is trying to help an occasional recurring character, April Kyle. During the process, Spenser befriends hooker Ginger Buckey and learns of her a terrible father, the toughest man in Lindell, Maine. Spenser reports into his client:. She smiled more. You are in your own idealistic way as cynical as I am. Chapter 13 is all Western, and all great. I recopied it out, hoping to learn a few literary lessons along the way. Maine is much bigger than any of the other New England states and large stretches of it are, to put it kindly, rural. Lindell is more rural than most of Maine. If three people left, it would be more rural than the moon. The center of town appeared around a curve in a road that ran through scrub forest. There was a cinder block store with a green translucent plastic portico in front and two gas pumps. Across the street was a bowling The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) with a sign in the window that said Coors in red neon script. Beyond the three buildings the road continued its curve back into the scrub forest. Some years back there had been a timbering industry, but when the forest got depleted, the timber companies moved on while Lindell sat around and waited for the new trees to grow. I parked in front of the Lindell sign and went into the building. Half of it was post office, one window and a bank of post office boxes along the wall. The other half of the building was the site of town government in Lindell. Town government appeared to be a fat woman in a shapeless dress sitting at a yellow pine table with two file cabinets behind her. I smiled at her. She nodded. There was a gap in her upper front teeth about four teeth wide. I smiled at her again. Was I losing it? Of course not. She was just obdurate. But this might be important to Vern. I was smiling and talking. I drove seven hours to talk with him and I want to know where he is. The woman laughed a wheezy laugh. She fumbled around in the litter on the table and found a tired- looking pack of Camels and got one out and lit it with a kitchen match that she scratched on the underside of the table. She inhaled some smoke and blew it out with a kind of snort. She smoked some more of The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) Camel. She was squinting through the smoke from the cigarette, which she left in the corner of her mouth while she talked. She laughed again, wheezing, and choked a little on the smoke The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) her cigarette and laughed and choked and wheezed at the same time. She stopped laughing and wheezed a little longer and got her breath back and squinted at me some more. I was gaining ground, so I shut up and smiled and listened. Susan said it was a technique I might consider polishing. The fat woman pointed with her chin. She inhaled, coughed, The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) chuckled in her wheezy way. I was wearing jeans and running shoes and a gray sleeveless T-shirt and a gray silk tweed summer jacket and a gun. I took off the jacket, and unclipped the gun from my belt and folded the jacket on top of the gun and put them on the front seat of my car. Then I walked across the street and into the bowling alley. The bowling alley was one of those round-topped corrugated buildings that look like a big Quonset hut or a small airplane hangar. There were only three lanes inside, and a snack bar that sold beer and sandwiches. No one was bowling. A short dark-haired man with The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) bald spot and tattooed arms was behind the bar. He had on a sleeveless undershirt with a spot of ketchup on it. Sitting on a barstool drinking Budweiser beer from a longnecked bottle was a guy with a round red face and a big hard belly. He was entirely bald and his head seemed to swell out of his thick shoulders without The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) of neck. He had small piggy eyes under scant eyebrows that were blond or The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) and barely visible and his thick flared short nose looked like a The Professional (A Spenser Mystery). The eyes and nose gave his face a swinish cast. He was wearing a dirty white T-shirt and baggy blue overalls and work boots. He was staring straight ahead and drinking the beer. When I came in he shifted his stare at me and in its meanness it was nearly tangible. The hand wrapped around the beer bottle was thick and hammy with big knuckles. There was no air-conditioning in the place but a big floor fan hummed near the bar, pushing the hot air around the dim room. He unhooked his bootheels from the lower rung of The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) barstool and let his feet drop to the floor and stood up. He was The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) least six feet four, which The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) him three inches The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) me, and he must have weighed eighty pounds more than my two hundred. A lot of it was stomach but what he lacked in conditioning he probably made up in meanness. Buckey put the beer bottle down on the counter and stepped toward me. The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) shrugged. In the parking lot. No point messing up this slick amusement complex. I turned and went out the door. In the parking lot cars and pickup trucks and two motorcycles had arrived. People sat in the cars and trucks and on the bikes in a kind of expectant semicircle. I gave her a short thumbs-up gesture. She poked an elbow into the man The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) to her and pointed at me with her chin. I could hear her wheeze. Buckey came out of the bowling alley The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) with his little pig eyes in the glare of the summer. He looked around at the circle of onlookers and hunched his shoulders as if to get a kink out and came straight at me. Said everyone in this part of the state was afraid of you. The Professional (Spenser, #37) by Robert B. Parker

The usual snappy TV dialogue reminiscent of the old Spenser for Hire show coupled with a much more introspective Spenser. I'll always hear Robert Urich and Avery Brooks doing the dialogue. A fast read, thanks to larger print and lots of white space; finished in less than 12 hours of reading time. A storyline that seemed to drag itself out, as if it didn't want to end; much like the "case" Spenser worked on with a lot of The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) time on his hands. A little too much The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) and not enough of the smart. A little too much Susan and not enough of the smart, witty Hawk. Most of the supporting characters didn't elicit much sympathy; didn't feel developed enough; even Gary, the central reason for the story was a shadow. Something to read in place of current TV, but less of the punchy action usually found in this series. Time The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) start back at 1 in the series, but adjusting back to the 's may be tough. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — The Professional by Robert B. The Professional Spenser 37 by Robert B. The wives of Boston's wealthiest men have a mutual secret: they all had an affair with the same cad who's blackmailing them, and Spenser's been hired to stop him. But when the wives start dying one by one, Spenser's new The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) becomes murder. Get A Copy. Hardcoverpages. Published October 5th by G. Putnam's Sons first published More Details Original Title. Boston, Massachusetts United States. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about The Professionalplease sign up. I just received this book do I need to read Robert Parker's books in order? The dedication of the book: "For Emma, who arrived; and for Gracie, who left. See 2 questions about The Professional…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of The Professional Spenser, One of Robert B. I found this to be much better than expected, confirming my initial opinion of it years ago. What really makes this one interesting is a story-line peppered with women every guy over forty has known, and the same type of homage that Spenser used in Potshot, with a twist. This one begins when Spenser is hired through an attorney out of her depth to help four relatively young, upscale and beautiful women get a blackmailer off their back. Lovable Gary has video and audio of their encounters and has seen a way to make a buck. This becomes interesting because Parker pulls no punches here in showing the four women, beyond their well-described outer appearances, to be shallow and petty. The inference is that they are perhaps more culpable than hound dog Gary Eisenhower, whom Spenser is surprised to discover he likes. In fact, one The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) the women may still want to be with him. Oddly, the only marriage where any affection exists is a sham in The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) that go far beyond The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) Daddy and nymphette. Gary could, in fact, unknowingly destroy The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) Senate candidate. His name is Chet, and his millions mask a business that has him familiar with Tony Marcus. Yeah, that Tony Marcus. And someone involved in this mess may be more twisted than Spenser, Gary, Chet or Tony Marcus ever imagined. The Professional is in fact a more complex entry than it initially appears. Of course we get the inevitable and ongoing discussion between Susan and Spenser about pathology, and just who is being used here. But as Spenser alludes to at one point during the mystery, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and Gary appears to be exactly what he seems — a The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) guy who likes rich and attractive married women he can hit up for cash when times get lean. The women in fact have already found other playmates with whom to cheat on their respective spouses. A surprisingly good one in the series, despite it The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) a later entry in the Spenser canon. A fine read. View all 11 comments. An unsuccessful The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) somewhat interesting Spenser. All the irritating Spenser things motive-exploring dialog, Susan, the Tonto-ization of Hawk are here, but the delightful things snappy patter, vivid descriptions of places and people, drive-by literary allusions are here as well. To further complicate matters, the book's principal strength turns into its greatest weakness. Parker introduces an obvious Spenser character foil--Gary Eisenhower--whom Spenser likes and even somewhat admires. Sure, An unsuccessful but somewhat interesting Spenser. Sure, Eisenhower seduces and blackmails the wives of wealthy men, yet he possesses a code and even a kind of bravery--like our hero. The only problem with this The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) that Parker can't figure out how to make Eisenhower central to the plot, and the ending of the book seems anti-climactic and cobbled together. There is a new bad guy pair here, though, and the relationship between the smart shooter Zel and the dumb gorilla Boo The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) saved the book for me. But not quite. Nov 27, Kemper rated it liked it Shelves: spensercrime-mysterydetectives. I just read that he died today. Yes, I do feel like a The Professional (A Spenser Mystery). The books were good and the critics loved him and deemed him the heir to Raymond Chandler. He wrote about a dozen of these books and everything was great for him and his readers. Then disaster struck. His wife had an affair, and they almost divorced. Depressed, Parker integrated the story into the books with Spenser and his long-time girlfriend Susan having a break-up. Eventually Parker and his wife reconciled, and he again worked this into his fiction by having Spenser and Susan reunite in one of the best storylines of the Spenser series. Book after book has revolved around a rugged main character who loves a woman who is flawed and not faithful, but he stands by her no matter what she does. This has The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) repeated in not just the Spenser books, but in other ones that Parker has written. And that has made him boring and repetitive. Why do I keep reading? And actually, the last couple of Spenser books have been an improvement. This time out, Spenser is hired by a lawyer representing four women being blackmailed by a man they all had affairs with named Gary Eisenhower. Eisenhower is a charming rogue and even Spenser kind of likes the guy. He tries to break up the scheme and limit the damage to all parties. But things get complicated and then people get dead. Excuse me. I just threw up in my mouth a little. And of course, there had to be a scene where Spenser tries to interview an unhappy woman who gets drunk and hits on him. I think that makes about the th time this has occurred. Next up: Spenser looks at some art in Painted Ladies. View all 22 comments. Robert B. Parker | Cozy Mystery List

Parker English Hardcover Boo. Parker English Paperback Book. Robert B. Be the first to write a review. Parker, Robert The Cheap. Please note, the image is for illustrative purposes only, actual book cover, binding and edition may vary. It has a LDPE 04 logo on it, The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) means that it can be recycled with other soft plastic such as carrier bags. We encourage you to recycle the packaging from your World of Books purchase. If for some reason your order has not arrived within 14 days please get in contact with us so that we can help you. Unfortunately we are currently unable to provide combined shipping rates. World of Books Australia was founded in We offer great value books on a wide range of subjects and we now ship over two million orders each year to satisfied customers throughout the world. We take great pride in our prompt delivery, first class customer service and excellent feedback. 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Email to friends Share on Facebook - opens in a new window or tab Share on Twitter - opens in a new window or tab Share on Pinterest - opens in a new window or tab Add to Watchlist. Opens image gallery Image not available Photos not available for this variation. Very good: A book that does not look new and has been read but is in excellent condition. Spenser The Professional (A Spenser Mystery) never had any difficulty handling women. But when four stunningly beautiful trophy wives hire him to protect them against a blackmailer threatening to expose their infidelities, even he must admit that they look like trouble.