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Title: Bad Business by ROBERT PARKER, JOE MANTEGNA ISBN: 0-7393-0949-8 Publisher: Random House Audio Pub. Date: 09 March, 2004 Format: Audio CD Volumes: 5 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.8 (25 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Parker on Autopilot
Comment: I don't like to give Spenser novels a bad review, because I love the characters (except Susan) and the series, and have gotten hours of enjoyment out of them. But in this novel Parker seems to have basically been on autopilot and I did not find it very well done at all.
Here we have Spenser hired by one Marlene Rowley to follow her husband Trent because she thinks he's been cheating on her. Sure enough, Spenser follows good ol' Trent to a hotel where he is doing whatever it is he does with an attractive blonde. There, Spenser bumps into another PI following the blonde. Interesting, huh? And so it goes-Trent is the CFO for a company called Kinergy, an energy broker, and winds up dead in the corporate officers. Spenser unravels a [...] fraudulent scheme going on, as well as a sex ring among the major players at Kinergy. And of course, Spenser doggedly gets it all unraveled in the end.
The key problem here is that the story reads like a cookie cutter Spenser novel. Many Spenser novels in the past few years have been trending in that direction, but they usually offer at least some small insight, interesting plotline, or some tidbit that hooks you. We have none of that here. The plot is not that interesting, the dialogue is not that interesting, even Hawk and Vinnie are not that interesting! (Plus, there were typos throughout the book, which were distracting and annoying).
A disappointing effort. But as a Spenser junkie, I can't wait for the next one!
Rating: 4
Summary: Spenser back in "Bad Business"
Comment: As his legions of fans know, author Robert B. Parker does not provide novels with deep complicated characters or byzantine plots. What he does provide, especially in the Spenser series novels, are books where good is clearly good, bad is very bad and gray simply, for the most part, does not exist. The characters are shallow, the women are usually attracted to Spenser but he will resist mightily their advances because of his love for Susan, and Hawk will be there with style to provide needed muscle on occasion. In short, it is a formula that has worked for years and his latest novel, Bad Business, follows the formula making it another lightweight though entertaining read.
This time around the initial beautiful woman near tears in Spenser's office is Marlene Cowley. She wants to hire Spenser to investigate her husband, Trent Cowley. She is convinced he is cheating on her and wants proof that will humiliate and destroy him in open court. Spenser reluctantly agrees as he does not care for this type of cases and such proof isn't required in the courts of today.
Before long, Spenser discovers that his client has a tail of her own. Apparently Trent shares the same concerns and has hired another investigator to tail her. The two investigators as a matter of professional courtesy acknowledge each other's case but neither can explain why there soon appears to be yet another investigator involved. Spenser begins looking at that angle and before he can get very far, the deaths begin. The two investigators soon vanish and Spenser is left working a case that grows stranger by the day.
The reader is left with a shallow but entertaining read as Spenser delves into the world of corporate finance. Hawk is his usual self, Susan is beautiful and offers insightful advice when needed as always, and Pearl the wonder dog is always around and the subject of many asides. In short, this is the usual Spenser with no surprises and no new ground is covered. The novel at 310 pages is a fast read and by the end, all is right with the world once again. Who could ask for more?
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: 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 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: 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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