Amazon.com
Sudden Mischief, the 25th Spenser novel, finds Robert B. Parker's seemingly ageless sleuth once again engaging Boston's bad guys and sorting out life's moral dilemmas, all (or mostly) in the name of love. When Spenser's girlfriend, psychiatrist Susan Silverman, asks him to investigate charges of sexual harassment leveled against her ex-husband, Brad Sterling, the detective agrees, though the assignment "shows every sign of not working out well." As the sexual harassment allegations melt like April snow, Sterling drops out of sight, a dead body appears in his office, and Spenser discovers a murky slush of clues that suggest Sterling's work as a marketing genius for local charities has been a front for some truly despicable criminal activities. As always, the more-than-slightly-shady Hawk is on hand to help Spenser sort the good from the bad, but Spenser is left to his own devices when it comes to making sense of the emotional havoc the case creates in his relationship with Susan. And what devices they are: emotionally mature and physically dynamic, Spenser once again proves himself as detective, friend, lover, and human being as Sterling's reappearance forces Susan to examine her past and her conscience while searching for her own autonomy. As always, Spenser endures as an intelligent, ethical, and poetic private eye, even if his endless middle age seems a bit supernatural. Parker's nimble, Spartan prose suits a character who carries his years in wisdom rather than body fat. If the heart of any truly great detective series is a truly great detective, Sudden Mischief and the rest of Parker's Spenser novels surely fit the bill. --L.A. Smith
From Booklist
The relationship between Spenser, Parker's ageless hero, and Susan Silverman, the sleuth's longtime lover, takes center stage in this twenty-fifth installment in the perennially best-selling series. 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. The mystery plot here is nothing special--Spenser and the inimitable Hawk snoop, crack wise, rough up bad guys, and solve the case, just like always--but the parallel plot involving Susan coming to terms with the demons of her childhood and her need to control the dangerous men in her life gives the novel a beyond-genre dimension. Yes, Spenser is a little too sensitive, and Susan is a little too wise, but Parker has always known how to mix fantasy and realism in a way that works as wish fulfillment for reality-bound readers. This is a hard-boiled love story with an irresistible soft spot in its heart: substitute mobsters for communists, and you have The Way We Were with a happy ending. Bill Ott
