Back Story...

Exhausted and struggling with a headache, I was good for nothing last night, so I collapsed onto my bed right after work and slept. When I woke up, I read a book: Robert B. Parker's latest, Back Story. A Spenser novel.

I love the Spenser novels. Some people say they aren't as good as they used to be, that they are getting repetitious, that Parker is feeding off himself. Nonsense. They are fun. They are witty. They deliver what they always delivered: action, wit, and characterization. Even minor mobsters have distinct personalities that come across in brief, vivid descriptions.

It isn't generally the plot that gets me reading, though I find the books difficult to put down. It's the style, and the characters, specifically Spenser and Hawk, that are the appeal. Spenser is a tough Boston private detective with a sharp, witty mouth. Hawk is his tougher-than-tough black friend who, besides being a thug, is a man of many facets. Hawk is brilliant: a large, laid-back killer who cites Occam's razor:

"That be your version of Occam's razor," said Hawk. "I'll do it because I don't know what else to do."

"Occam's razor?" I said.

Hawk shrugged, his eyes still following the woman in the meager bathing suit.

"I read a lot," said Hawk.

I would love the books anyway, but Hawk is what makes them irresistible.

The third in the trilogy of ongoing protagonists is Susan Silverman, a psychotherapist who is Spenser's long-time girlfriend - he met her in the second book and there have been umpteen books since then. Now, I don't much like Susan. She has her moments, but I'm put off by Spenser's worshipful attitude, by a sense that there is something artificial about her - impeccable make-up, fancy shoes - and how can I warm to a woman who nibbles on quarter-sandwiches and pieces of lettuce for lunch?

In this book, Susan is at her best: she even leads the interrogation that elicits a confession from the killer. Moreover, the mob threatens her. Cool. I liked Susan better this time round.

Oh, and there's also Pearl - the dog that Spenser and Susan share and spoil shamelessly. Pearl died in the last book. In this book, they acquire a second Pearl. They had to go to Toronto to get her. I wondered why.

The plot? Yeah, there's a plot. For the price of six donuts Spenser takes on a case for his young friend Paul, for an actress who wants him to discover who killed her mother twenty-eight years ago. The woman was shot in a bank hold-up. Once he's looking into the case, Spenser is being warned off by the NSA and the mob; the FBI is running interference, Boston policeman Quirk is feeding him information, and he has the help of an FBI agent named Epstein who wants the truth. The more he looks into the case, the more obscure it gets, until even the daughter (appalled by what he learns, and the way he is uncovering her own lies) legs him to drop the case. Spenser being Spenser, he won't.

In the end, he gets the truth with a promise that he will not reveal it. I wondered what story he could tell his various law-enforcement buddies that would make them believe it was all over - without the truth.