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Title: Bad Business by Robert B. Parker ISBN: 0-399-15145-1 Publisher: Penguin USA Pub. Date: 08 March, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.8 (25 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: The Good, the Bad, the Snarly....
Comment: If you are new to Spenser, start with an earlier book, such as "Looking for Rachel Wallace," or what I consider his very best, "Paper Doll." You could also start at the beginning and work your way through all 31, and have a very nice time. But by no means should you begin your Spenser adventure with this book.
The plot is energetic but quite confusing - an Enron-like company pulling fiscal scams, all mixed up with some headache-inspiring spouse-swapping frenzy, huh? - but the real disappointment is, there is no one to care about here. Parker delivers his usual wit and wisdom, and that is what his fans love - the crisp dialogue, the social commentary, the gleeful puncturing of society's various bubbles. It helps to have visits from nearly every character we love (Hawk, Vinnie, Rita, and Susan who sort of grows on you) but this book lacks a crucial something that his earlier works had in abundance: sympathetic people, whether clients or others, whom you could cheer for, and bad people whom you could truly hate. I found myself having difficulty telling one supporting character from another, and by the end - when the only really bad dude is reduced to hissing like a lizard when he's caught - I didn't care how it ended, as long as it ended soon. It was kind of embarrasing, hiss hiss.
Spenser is always, always worth a read, even in a confusing mess like this. But for most people, it's probably a good idea to just take this one out of the library. I've already given my copy away, leaving me one book short of a complete set. I just don't care.
Many books ago, in "Walking Shadow," (which, in my opinion, was the first book where Parker's cracks began to show) Hawk had a wonderful line that went something like, "This is the silliest thing you ever got me involved in." I kept waiting for Hawk to say something like that in this one (pointless sexual tangles, fakes and double-fakes with the stock market, an open-marriage advocate/talk show host in love with a... Well I don't want to spoil it, whatever it is), but he didn't. The plot of "Walking Shadow" was clear and grounded compared to this. Maybe Hawk should walk off and start his own series, and replace the Spenser clones Jesse Stone (young male clone) and Sunny Randall (female clone). Most of us who are die-hard Spenser fans would follow Hawk anywhere.
Rating: 4
Summary: Welcome back, Spenser and crew!
Comment: This book comes close to vintage Spenser. He's based in Boston, not flying off to some desert town in Arizona. He brings back the gang: Hawk, Vinnie, Susan, and more.
Reading Bad Business means visiting these old friends. Like many of Parker's readers, they've become middle-aged and settled. (In a much earlier book, Spenser reluctantly dons reading glasses!) As a result, there's less room for character growth. Susan's a successful shrink, significant other and non-cook...just as she was in the last ten or so books. Hawk continues to be larger-than-life. Where can they go from here? Author Parker needs to give them some tough challenges to reveal new layers.
The plot of this novel has been amply described in editorial reviews as well as other customer reviews. I agree with those who question the financial elements of the plot, where Spenser is out of his element. He's much better when he can mete out his own version of justice.
However, Parker has managed to capture subtle aspects of corporate life with his usual wit, one beat away from satire. I've met CEO's just like Bob Cooper. Although they headed smaller companies, they put on a good show, demonstrated boundless enthusiasm even when they'd rather be eating mud, and kept their hands clean.
Even so, I wish Parker had focused more on the "growth seminars" and their aftermath. And I wish the villains had been more evil and less weasly. Nobody worth shooting here!
In my opinion, Early Autumn was Parker's all-time best book. You could read Early Autumn as a textbook of child and adolescent psychology. Other books showed Spenser's biting wit as he cut through conventions and pretentious displays. Plots were tighter and held more surprises.
Everybody's mellowed. Inevitable but Bad Business still held my attention more than most mysteries I read these days. And I'll be waiting for the next.
Rating: 4
Summary: Predictably good
Comment: It is hard to conceive of a bad Parker novel. By now his skills are so honed, his characters so familiar, his dialogue so effortless, his sense of place so assured and his plots so polished that he is the safest buy in crime fiction.
This is good, average Parker, with very deft depiction of the accounting scams motivating the crime. As others have noted, the Enron parallels are explicit, there is too much Susan and too little action. Still, we buy the books and enjoy them.
We all continue to wonder, however, what Parker could do if he really put his mind to it, sent Susan and Pearl, incommunicado, to the farthest reaches of the globe, and focused on Hawk and Vinnie in a good old fashioned bloodfest. That might be his gift to his faithful readers for enduring the kissy face, dainty eating, cutesy-poo talk and dog slobber all these years.
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Title: Stone Cold: A Jesse Stone Novel by Robert B. Parker ISBN: 0399150870 Publisher: Putnam Pub Group Pub. Date: 29 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Narrows: A Novel by Michael Connelly ISBN: 0316155306 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 03 May, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: 3rd Degree by James Patterson, Andrew Gross ISBN: 0316603570 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 01 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: The Last Juror by John Grisham ISBN: 0385510438 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 03 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: The Hanged Man's Song by John Sandford ISBN: 0399151397 Publisher: Putnam Pub Group Pub. Date: 10 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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